Dissimulate
by Grandiose Me
Summary: Wherein Megamind is apprehended by an organization of superheroes, and Roxanne learns that she may be just a little bit crazier than she thought she was.
1. Abduction

**Author's Note: **Whoo! My first multi-chaptered Megamind fic. Ok. The basics. This story borrows some themes from my other fic, 'Damsel', although it's not necessary to read that one in order to understand this one, I don't think. There are OCs but I tried to keep them within the style/flavor of Megamind itself, and they basically just exist to further the plot and poke fun at the Justice League, Avengers, and other superhero teams. And... that's about it.

* * *

Roxanne glowered at the brain bot on the other side of the kitchen. She wasn't sure what had possessed it – some kind of glitch in its computerized brain, a flight of fancy, maybe some lingering resentment over her introduction into its life – but the thing had grabbed her purse. The handle was draped through its mechanical jaws, unscathed but beyond her reach. She'd spent the past twenty minutes chasing the bot throughout the house, trying to get it to let go. She'd thought she'd won when she'd finally managed to clap a couple of pots on either side of the little robotic menace, but she'd forgotten how strong the things could be, and had nearly gotten her arms wrenched off for her trouble. Which was what brought her to their current impasse, as she rested her hands against the back of a nearby chair and stared at the glowing, whirring little menace.

Chasing it hadn't worked and her efforts at imprisonment had fallen resounding flat. It was time for a new plan. Roxanne sucked in a deep breath.

"Okay," she said, purposefully trying to keep her voice light and playful. The way she generally heard Megamind talk to them. "Okay, you've had your fun. Now give mommy her purse back…" The bot whirred curiously, hovering sideways a little as she started making her way slowly towards it. "That's it, there's a good little robot, just let me-"

She lunged, letting out a triumphant cry as her hands finally closed around the bag. The brain bot made a squeaking sound not entirely unlike a protest and tugged, pulling the purse strap tight, and Roxanne knew exactly what was going to happen right before the stitches ripped and the whole thing came apart. Her wallet, keys, the tiny bag of emergency toiletries, her make-up kit, her anti-kidnapping gun and her cell phone all went spilling onto the kitchen floor. The brain bot took off towards the living room, the torn strap flapping from between its teeth, leaving her to hold the broken and empty remnants of her favorite purse in her hands.

Roxanne sighed. "I hate that bot," she muttered, falling to her knees and picking everything up. She eyed the clock, but thankfully she wasn't _quite_ running late yet. Megamind had left for his lair early that morning, possessed by some moment of inspiration that had struck him during the night. She'd woken up halfway when he'd leaned over to kiss her cheek at the crack of dawn, and woken up all the way when she'd heard the sound of the car pulling out into the street. Despite the insane hour she'd been unable to go back to sleep. That was turning out to be a good thing, though, as she went and got her old purse replaced all of the contents, frowning a little because it was _just_ shy of being big enough to hold it all. That was the main reason she'd replaced it in the first place. In the end she shoved her cell phone and keys in her pocket instead and headed back out the door, right in time for her phone to start jangling.

"Hello?" she answered, locking up behind her and starting down the street towards the bus station. Metro City had really good public transportation – it was even better now that Megamind was actively helping it, rather than occasionally blowing pieces of it up – and she preferred using it to driving herself around. It was always impossible to find a parking space downtown anyway.

"Roxanne, you've got to get down here _now_," the voice of Bill, her current cameraman, informed her.

Roxanne frowned. "Wow, that was helpful and specific," she replied. "Where's 'here' and what's happening?" She paused, figuring that she'd probably have to hail a cab now. There was a brief crackle of static which made her furrow her brow. She looked up – _always_ look up if something's going on Metro City – and sure enough, there was dark smoke on the horizon. Her heart lurched.

"City Hall," Bill replied. "I would've picked you up but I thought you were already on the way. You… you should be here."

Something in his tone made fear snap inside of her like a whip, and without missing a beat Roxanne hung up on him, hailed a cab, and shoved a few extra bills into the driver's hand with an order to step on it. As the streets zipped past she that the police had set up the usual warnings, and when they reached the street blockage to keep civilians out, she went by foot. Part way through she realized that she'd forgotten her press pass in all the morning's chaos, but thankfully no one questioned her or tried to stop her. Up overhead the clouds and smoke rolled and flashed, though she didn't hear any of Megamind's usual banter echo down to her.

That was a very bad sign.

Police and a few firemen had created a perimeter around City Hall. She spotted Bill and the news van pretty quickly, and started to dash over, but then something in the sky overhead caught her attention and she came up short, halting in shock.

Hovering over top of City Hall was a woman clad in a vaguely armor-like outfit. The ensemble included a pair of knee-high golden boots, a flimsy red skirt, and what looked to be a metal bikini top. It didn't leave a whole lot to the imagination and couldn't possibly have been comfortable in the cold air, but Roxanne was far more concerned with two things – one was the fact that she _recognized_ that woman. The other was the fact that said woman was holding her unconscious boyfriend in one hand, his black-clad body dangling limply from her grasp, head limp and dangling towards the ground. Her throat stuck at the sight. But it didn't make any sense. All of the onlookers were staring up in confusion. Some of Megamind's black smoke dissipated, and Roxanne realized that the woman wasn't alone. Hovering just behind her was a man dressed in brown and green spandex, with a stylized army helmet atop his head and an eerie, off-white light emanating softly from his hands. The ground around the City Hall building didn't look badly torn up. In fact, it seemed like very little fighting at all had gone on. The mayor was out, and she dimly noted that he was arguing with a very buff young man in a white speedo and ankle bracelets.

"What…?" Roxanne breathed.

Those people, the woman holding Megamind, the man behind her, the guy on the ground – they weren't supervillains. She recognized them all from a piece she'd done years ago, back when she'd first been made Metroman's exclusive reporter. They were _heroes_. Specifically, they were all part of the Leadership Circle which governed the Heroes' Collective, a global group of united superheroes which Metroman had belonged to. For one moment Roxanne dared to hope that things weren't what they looked like.

Then she noticed that the man in the Speedo had Minion, sans his robotic body but still within his sphere of water, tucked under one arm. The fish alien was bobbing inside it, his eyes glazed and unfocused. He was unusually silent.

Roxanne found her voice. "What's going on here?" she demanded, the question coming out surprisingly loud and carrying far enough that most eyes turned in her direction. Silence descended again for a moment, enough so that she could hear the quiet _hiss-pop_ of Megamind's smoke machines. He had a few pocketed throughout the city. For a few seconds, it seemed like nothing would break the quiet. Then a heavy hand fell onto her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Roxanne Ritchi. Star reporter for Metro City News. Victim of one hundred and fifty six kidnappings and fourteen attempted kidnappings, formerly affiliated with the late Metroman, currently attached to the career criminal Megamind," a raspy voice said from a step behind her. She turned and flinched away, glaring at its owner. The man was a little on the short side, with five-o-clock shadow covering his square jaw, and the top half of his head hidden beneath a grey mask. He was wearing a matching wife-beater and a pair black tights. "You must have one wicked case of Stockholm's, lady," he growled.

Roxanne ignored the dig in favor of gesturing towards the woman holding Megamind. "Classy. What's the Heroes' Collective doing here, Slasher? And why are your friends manhandling Metro City's savior?" she demanded.

Reaching into a side-pocket of the wide, silver-colored belt he was wearing, Slasher pulled out a cigarette. Oh. Wonderful. The one time she'd interviewed the man she'd had to spend the entire time sitting in a cloud of smoke, and given the circumstances, she wasn't in the mood to do it again. Roxanne's glare intensified as he lit up. "Savior. Ha. Public opinion on that menace might have changed, Ritchi, but the laws don't," he growled out. "Your _boyfriend_ up there has eighty-eight life sentences to his record. But that's city business. He'd be a local problem if it weren't for the one crime that we don't overlook." He let out a puff of smoke, his eyes narrow behind his mask. "Murder."

Waving a hand to clear the smoke away from her face, Roxanne gave him her best look of incredulity. "Are you sure that's a regular cigarette you've got there? Megamind's never murdered anyone."

Slasher paused, giving her an assessing look. "Delusional?" he muttered under his breath. Then, more clearly, he said "have you already forgotten about your former associate, Ritchi? _Metroman?_"

Oh.

Oh crap.

Roxanne felt her heart sink into her gut. How could she have…? Well, there'd been a lot going on and a lot to take in for the past few months, _that_ was how she could have forgotten. But she remembered it now. The Heroes' Collective usually let heroes operate independently, patrolling their own little 'sectors' however they saw fit. They only really came together when there was a global crisis. Or, and this was the problem, if a member of the Collective was killed. In which case the whole group would descend upon the person or persons responsible, escorting them to the maximum security prison which various governments had helped them construct _in space_. A prison reserved for the most dangerous and deadly criminals to threaten the world. A prison that was reportedly impossible to escape from.

But things still didn't make a whole lot of sense. "Why are you just showing up _now_ then?" Roxanne demanded, her fists clenching. "Where were you guys when he was apparently running rampant through the city? Or when Titan did a bang-up job of nearly killing us all?"

Slasher inhaled deeply and let out another smoky breath. "Politics," he replied. "Disbelief. Heroes like Metroman don't go down easy. When it was first brought to our attention we assumed it was a gambit of his. After the Titan Incident we were left to conclude that wasn't the case. Power plays ensued. Metroman had a lot of sway in the Collective. There were disagreements on the new management scheme. But that's done now." Another drag. "Sorry for the delay."

Reaching out in a fit of temper, Roxanne snatched the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it onto the pavement. "Listen, you-" she began. Then she paused as Slasher's right hand flashed, distorted, turned sharp and long and metal and came to rest just under her chin. He glared at her.

"Don't touch my smokes, lady," he snarled. She grit her teeth, staring him down over the tip of his hand-turned-blade.

"Give it a rest. I did a report on you, remember? You've got a rule against killing. You're not going to break it over a cigarette," she snapped back at him.

They stared off for a minute.

Slasher moved his hand back, returning it to its normal shape and snorting at her. "Most people forget that when they're under the knife."

"Yeah, well, throw in a few whirling saw blades and a machine gun or two and _then_ we'll talk about intimidation," she returned. Throwing another anxious glance towards Megamind – the woman holding him was shouting something at the man behind her – she tossed her hands up in momentary frustration. There was only one possible solution for their problem, and while she didn't _like_ doing it, she didn't see how there were many alternatives. She wasn't about to let them cart Megamind off to jail. "You won't consider making an exception?" she asked, just to be sure. "He really didn't actually mean for that plan to work, you know, and he's all we've got now – who's going to defend the city without him?"

Slasher shrugged. "We've got a guy. Promoted him from the Teen League. He'll do," he said. "No exceptions for hero killers."

"Fine. Metroman isn't dead."

She was expecting either surprise or skepticism, and got the latter, Slasher giving her a look that even through his mask said he thought she was full of it. "Heroes don't abandon their cities Ritchi. If he were alive he'd have shown up when Titan attacked." At that, his expression dropped some. "I knew him. Good man, solid hero. Heh. Shoulda known he'd die – the good ones always die."

Roxanne raised an eyebrow at him.

"Damn," he said, exhaling heavily. "Now I need another smoke."

"He's not dead!" she exclaimed. "He's alive! He's fine! He's just an idiot. Look, I'll take you to him, alright?" _Sorry, Music Man,_ she thought, even as she made the offer.

Slasher gave her a long, assessing look. Then he lit up another cigarette, stared towards the sky, and nodded at no one in particular. "You get one shot," he said. "I'll drive."

If Roxanne had thought that that first drive to the little red school house with Megamind was awkward, it was only because she had lacked a sufficient frame of reference. Slasher loomed silently in the news van, his not-inconsiderable-bulk of muscles awkwardly filling out the seat (apparently, he didn't actually have his own car) as he silently followed her directions, reeking of Old Spice and tobacco and something else that she didn't care to try and identify. The worry settled in fast and hard as she only piped up with the occasional 'turn here' and 'no, go back, you passed it', wondering how the Collective had knocked Megamind unconscious. If he was badly hurt. If Minion was alright, and what that glazed look in his eyes had been about.

"There," she said when they finally cleared the last side street, and the tiny hill with the school house came into view. "That's it."

"His old haunt," Slasher noted.

She blinked at him. "You knew about it?"

He shrugged. "I know everything."

"Yeah, right," she shot back. "If you knew everything then you'd know he was still alive."

Slasher glared at her. "I do know everything. That's how I know that he isn't alive."

"Is too."

"Is not."

"Then why did you come?"

"Sometimes I wonder why the world hasn't killed that last flicker of hope in me. Then I remember-"

"Oh look, we're here," Roxanne cut him off, and he put his foot to the brake. She all but lunged for the door handle, storming towards the small red building with intent. Slasher followed a little more slowly behind her. A light wind kicked up the grass at her feet, blowing past them as she opened the door and led him down to the lower level, where Music Man's apartment and memorabilia were all kept.

It was dark. The apprehension in her increased as she noticed the way that all of the lights had been dimmed, and the rooms had been reduced to still silence. Even the lights behind the display cases were out, the bulbs dark and busted, as if they had been left running until they'd burned out and never been replaced. There were no glasses with ice-cubes, no sounds of running water or hum of electric power. A fine coating of dust was layered overtop of everything.

Dread swallowed her whole.

No.

No, no, no, no, that _bastard._ She looked around desperately as Slasher came up from behind her.

"No signs of life," he noted.

That couldn't possibly be actual dust, she decided. She and Megamind had visited just a few days ago, and the place had been fine. She walked over to a coffee table and ran her finger over the top of it, rubbing the substance between her fingers. She sniffed it. When that proved fruitless, she even went so far as to lick it, before retracting her tongue in disgust. "Corn starch," she realized. "It's fake, it's corn starch!" She whirled towards Slasher, who gave her a steady look of pity.

"You are one weird lady," he informed her. Then he took one last, long look around, sucked in a deep breath, and turned on his heel.

"No, wait!" she called, tearing after him. "Wait! Don't you get it? He set it up. He has super speed! He probably did it when he heard us pull up!" Slasher ignored her. She felt the beginnings of panic take over the worry and apprehension, the feeling like something was being slowly and thoroughly torn from her grasp. "Will you at least taste the dust? Just taste the dust!"

No answer.

"Please!" she tried, stumbling up the stairs in his wake, out of the old unused classroom and into the sunlight again. "Please, believe me. Megamind didn't kill him. Who has _copper _for a weakness? It doesn't even make any sense!"

Again, no answer.

"You can't take him!" she found herself blurting instead, as Slasher came up the van and then kept going, walking past it and making no move towards the door. She kept chasing him, vividly recalling when she had wanted to chase Megamind after he'd left her here, too, a look of defeat so prominent on his face when he told her that villains 'didn't get the girl' that even then she'd felt her heart crack.

Slasher paused, half turning to look back at her. "He's already gone," he said, nodding slightly towards the sky. Roxanne followed his gesture, looking up to the fluffy white clouds and line of buildings. It took her a second to piece it together. The sky was clear and blue.

It was completely bereft of any whisper of black smoke, any spark of electricity. Any hint of conflict.

* * *

Home was quiet when she walked through the door. Roxanne lingered in the entryway for several long moments, purse dangling from one hand, cell phone and keys in the other. Outside the sky was pitch black.

They'd taken him. And Minion. They'd taken _them_, all traces of them gone when she'd raced back to City Hall, the crowd still milling about in confusion and disbelief but the 'heroes' nowhere to be found. There had been anxiety high in the air. The station had wanted – no, the station had _needed_ her to cover the story, to provide people with information so that they'd understand what was going on. And she'd done it. Standing in front of the camera, talking with a mechanical lack of flare and inflection that was atypical of her style. But she hadn't been able to do more than that for work. Instead she'd taken to the city hall steps, dialing up every number she knew from the old days, every person who had some kind of connection to the Heroes' Collective or who might _possibly_ know where Music Man was. She'd dug up numbers and remembered more than she thought possible, dredging her brain until the font ran dry, and then she'd gone back to the school house again, but all to no avail.

The lair down by the observatory had been cleared out. She'd checked. All of the brain bots that had been there were gone, and so were the exo-suits, the ray guns, the in-progress devices and the completed plans for new things to help the city run better. They hadn't even left the harmless, purely beneficial things behind, like his idea for a better water filter and pipe system. When she'd walked through the door, she'd almost been expecting to find their home emptied, as well, but mercifully that didn't seem to be the case. The invisible car was gone. The hover bike was still in the garage, though, and the trio of brain bots that they kept to (supposedly) clean up around the place still seemed to be there.

Stepping slowly forward, Roxanne dumped her belongings onto the coffee table, and looked slowly around. She walked over to the hallway. Minion's spare suit was still in his room, propped up against the wall next to a table that held some magazines and a little tube of fish food. The bathroom looked fine. The bedroom was tidier than it had been when she'd left that morning, presumably thanks to the bots. The bed was made and the discarded pajamas had been picked up off of the floor, and the holographic watch was sitting forgotten on the bedside table, next to the alarm clock. He must have left it there when he went out in the morning. He'd probably been so excited over whatever thought had occurred to him…

Roxanne took in a deep breath and let it out again. It wasn't the end of the world. It _wasn't_. Megamind was better at breaking out of prison than any other supervillain, ever. He'd grown up in a prison! Maybe no one had escaped from the Collective's orbiting jail before, but there was a first time for everything.

_He's coming back,_ she assured herself.

* * *

Metro City's 'new hero' was a man who called himself _Dinomight_. Roxanne recognized him from a special she'd done two years ago. Except back then he'd had an afro and an unfortunate predilection towards talking like a bad rap video. The Dinomight she interviewed for the station was a little taller, had shaved himself bald, and mercifully avoided saying 'yo' at any point in the proceedings. In and of himself, she supposed, he wasn't that bad. He had explained himself as having 'the strength of a tyrannosaurus rex, the speed of a velociraptor, the endurance of a triceratops, and the complexion of a brontosaurus', which came off as incredibly nervous and rehearsed, but seemed accurate enough for a description. It wasn't really his fault that she wanted to beat him senseless with the microphone during the entirety of their time together, and when the cameras were finally turned off, he probably hadn't deserved the death glare she'd given him. Or that dig about his red spandex leotard.

It didn't really matter, anyway. As soon as Megamind figured out how to break free of prison, and they worked out a way to keep the Collective from arresting him again, Dinomight would be old news. He wasn't turning out to be very popular. Most people resented having a hero 'assigned' to them, especially as they felt that, all things considered, it was too little and too late from the group that had left them at Titan's mercy. Even when he'd been playing the part of the villain, Megamind had been a _known_ quantity – he was _theirs_, a fixture, part of their lives.

Part of _her_ life.

The brain bots drooped and moped around the house, sometimes drifting around Minion's empty suit in confusion, sometimes just dropping into the corners of various rooms and lying there, making sad little buzzing noises. It had been a whole month since the abduction (as she had come to think of it). Coming home for another day, Roxanne tried to remember the last time she'd gone an entire month without seeing Megamind. Not since the first time he kidnapped her, she thought, if she was counting his live appearances on television. She swallowed hard when she walked through the door. Ever since he'd been gone she'd found herself lingering strangely whenever she came in, like she didn't know what to do or how to move around when it was just _her_ in a place that was supposed to be _theirs_. Which was ridiculous. They hadn't even been living together for that long. But part of her still kept expecting to come in and find him waiting for her, with a smile and some blithe comment about how tricky it was to devise a space shuttle out of pop cans, and she found herself invariably disappointed and bereft every time that wasn't the case.

Sighing heavily, she put her things away, stepped out of her shoes, and headed for the bathroom. She paused for a moment at the doorway, spying the bedroom's beside table out of the corner of her eye as she moved.

The holographic watch was still sitting there.

Something in her chest clenched, and Roxanne changed paths, walking over to it instead. She picked it up. On the outside it just looked like an ordinary watch. There weren't any instructions for 'how to scan' or 'how to project', because those would obviously give away its purpose, but she knew that some of it had to do with twisting the clock face, and it really had more buttons than even an athletic watch rightly should.

Closing her hand around it, Roxanne turned and headed back into the living room. She grabbed her anti-kidnapping gun out of her purse. Originally she and Megamind had agreed upon outfitting her with a dehydration gun, largely because it was highly effective at subduing people and also non-lethal. After a rainy-day attack thwarted its effectiveness, however, he'd insisted on switching her to a stunning ray instead. It was a little more flashy and aggressive, but she'd gotten used to the change. Tucking it under one arm, she went back into the bedroom and flung open the closet. The floor was a mess of orphaned socks, boxes she still hadn't gotten around to unpacking from her old apartment, and all sorts of odds and ends shoved into the back corners and up onto the top shelf. Dropping to her knees, she dug through it all, and when that search was done, she stood on her tip-toes and went through the clutter at the top, too.

Something of an idea was beginning to take shape.

She came away from the closet with a pair of black leather boots, an older model cape, some small night-vision goggles, and a tiny, glowing binky. Carefully, she laid everything out on top of the bed. She had all of this, Minion's spare suit, three brain bots, and the hover bike in the garage. She wasn't sure how much of Megamind's infrastructure the Heroes' Collective had taken out. She hadn't seen a lot of construction work, and his city improvements had remained, but she'd still have to investigate that, she decided. Her mouth was dry. Insane, that was what her idea was.

Insane.

It was a good thing he had tiny feet for a guy, she decided, before turning back to the closet and fishing out her tightest black pants and a blue v-neck blouse.

* * *

The number of times she'd seen Megamind do this – the number of times she'd seen _any_ villain do this – one would think she could pull something like it off. Roxanne swallowed, hard, leaning against the wall of the alley across from Metro City Bank, one hand closed around the handle of her anti-kidnapping gun, the other fidgeting worriedly with the side of her cape. She took deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths. The hover bike was beside her. A few experiments had proven that the brain bots still knew how to put on a show, and could handle some of the stuff that she couldn't make heads or tails of. They didn't listen to her nearly as well as the listened to Megamind, or Minion, but she was fairly sure they'd pull this off, if only because it was something routine for them.

All she had to do was work up enough nerve to carry through with it. Her hands were sweating, and the tight, dark clothing made her unconscionably hot. She kept noticing the spikes on the cape's shoulder pads out of the corner of her eye, and she was still figuring out how to properly control the hover bike.

But she couldn't think of anything else, and she had to do _something_. She'd never been the kind of person who could just sit by and do nothing, not even when that meant walking straight up to her deadly ex-cameraman-turned-super-powered-menace, standing before him in full knowledge that he'd probably kill her. Compared to that, really, this was nothing. It wasn't like she was unused to public presentations, after all, and in the end that was really all it was. A show. A big, fancy show, and she might be in a different role, but it was a show she'd been part of countless times before.

There. That was as much nerve as she was going to get, she decided, swinging one leg over the side of the bike. She flicked the little switch at the top that she knew turned on the shield. Shields had been Megamind's new favorite toy before the abduction. He'd put one in any vehicle he could get his hands on, thrilled with the new technology he'd uncovered, and bizarrely preoccupied with safety issues in a way that seemed atypical of him. She could still remember him showing her the bike's shield the first time he'd installed it. "See!" he'd exclaimed. "I based it off of the mechanics of Minion's environ-mental sphere. Now if anyone else decides to throw a building at you two again it'll be less of a problem!" His smile had reached almost from ear to ear, and she'd reached a hand out, feeling a rush of wonder when her fingers had rested against a small, blue-tinged patch of air. That she was impressed had been obvious, and Megamind had been _so happy_ to successfully show off for her.

Determination filled her, and she waited for a break in traffic before hitting the gas. The bike lurched from the alley, crossing the road and zipping forward, straight up to the bank's doors. The door guard caught her eye and with a look of panic flung himself sideways. As she crashed through the glass and metal archways she felt the adrenaline hit her, sharp and fast, and the shield deflected the debris safely away without so much as a flicker while the propulsion systems sparked against the marble floors and the brakes screeched loudly in her ears.

The brain bots must have caught her cue. The smoke vents around the bank went up, filling the place in record time with dark clouds and sparks. It wasn't nearly as impressive or thorough as it would have been if Megamind had been doing it, but so far, so good. The bank's patrons stared at her in shock as she got off the bike and raised her stun gun, pulling a black sack out from the satchel behind the seat and tossing it to the floor in front of the service desks.

"Fill it," she snapped, the blood pounding in her ears.

Resounding silence was the initial response. Someone dropped one of the little chained pens at the front of the line, and the plastic clapping sound it made against the wood resounded through the air. No one moved, and swallowing down her apprehension, Roxanne aimed her gun at one of the security guards. With a mental apology she squeezed the trigger, and in a beam of flashing light he went down, crumpling to floor.

That did it.

The remaining security guards pulled their guns. She was still standing close enough to the bike and its shields that it didn't matter. No one opened fire, anyway, and most of the bank's patrons were familiar enough with their situations to just duck and cover, dropping to the ground, the vast majority of them still looking more puzzled or confused than scared. Roxanne caught the eye of the manager, and gestured meaningfully towards the empty sack. "Fill. It." The hand not holding the gun shook a little bit. She forced it to stop, clenching it into a fist instead. Had the silent alarm been set off yet? It must have been, right? She swallowed, and hesitantly the manager moved to comply.

Sirens started blaring outside. The sack was halfway full before she heard the broken glance tinkle behind her, and caught the sight of red spandex and a tall, scaly figure from the corner of her eye.

"Whoa…Miss Ritchi?" Dinomight asked, bewildered. "What are you doing?"

Roxanne turned around to look at him, putting her free hand on her hip and running her tongue over the roof of her mouth in an effort to get a little more moisture there. "Oh. You know. Just a little criminal activity. I thought I'd use it to flesh out my resume, I mean there's only so many times you can write 'got kidnapped' before people stop taking you seriously." She laughed. It sounded a little strained even in her own ears.

Dinomight frowned, the thick ridges on his forehead making it a monumental gesture. Cautiously, he looked her up and down. "Okay, wait, hold on. I think you might be having some kind of psychotic break," he suggested.

She reached over discretely to flick off the bike's shield. Then, she shot him in the shoulder. Well, she'd been aiming for his head, but it would do. The beam rebounded off of his thick hide and ricocheted towards the ceiling, where it broke apart against the lights. He took a staggering step back, but didn't fall, so she re-aimed and squeezed the trigger again. The second shot went wide, and she flinched a bit as it streaked through the broken doorway and hit one of the police cars outside, but the third and fourth both struck Dinomight directly on the chest. They rebounded just like the first had, streaming over the heads of the ducking bank patrons and hitting the walls. Dinomight staggered again, and then, before she could take another shot, lunged forward. His rough hand yanked the gun out of her grip so fiercely that she wondered if he'd dislocated her shoulder. He whipped her around, pulling her arm back so that the rest of her body was forced to contort with the motion, quite effectively stopping her from doing any more damage.

"I'm sorry, Miss Ritchi, but I'm going to have to take you in," he said.

She glanced back at him. "That's pretty much always how these things end, isn't it?" she asked, much to his obvious bewilderment.

* * *

The low-level supervillain cell at Metro City's women's prison hadn't seen a lot of use, but it wasn't really all that bad. Roxanne could think of worse _and_ better ways to spend her day than avoiding female convicts, receiving daily counseling from a very soft-voiced Dr. Quin, and sleeping in the same room as her toilet. It was more horrible than not-horrible, and after the first few days she started to doubt the effectiveness of her plan. But it was too late to change courses, even if she spent every night kicking herself and wondering when exactly she'd _lost her mind, _so she tried not to think about the fact that she might have just made a mess of her life for nothing. The trial had been pretty expedient, at least. Metro City was used to the revolving doors on its prisons and didn't waste a lot of time.

She had been in the midst of contemplating the abject failure of her spectacularly bad idea when one of the guards came and got her, informing her that she had a visitor.

_Finally_, Roxanne had thought, slumping a little in relief as she was led out of her cell and down towards the visitors' room.

The figure waiting for her on the other side of the glass barrier was dressed in a trench coat and a brown fedora, with a thick beard covering the lower half of his face and large, dark sunglasses over his eyes. Roxanne sat down across from him and picked up the little black phone on the side of the booth, swallowing hard, wondering if she could get _this_ part of it done, now. She simultaneously tamped down on the sudden surge of anger and betrayal she felt rising in the pit of her stomach at the sight of him.

"I thought you might turn up," she said into the receiver. Music Man answered her, his words unintelligible from the other side of the glass. She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Pick up your end of the line. Normal people can't hear through the barrier, that's what the phones are for," she instructed him.

His lips pursed in another brief show of displeasure before he complied. "Roxy, what were you thinking?" he asked.

She scowled at him, a flood of rage sweeping through her with surprising thoroughness.

There were words, she knew, that she was supposed to say, but right then it was kind of hard to find them in all the midst of her anger. She'd heard the phrase 'seeing red' before, but she'd never really understood until that moment. It was like she was so mad that her heart wanted to leap out of her chest, and all of the spiteful things she wanted to say clogged in the back of her throat like a traffic jam. When she was finally able to fish a few out, they emerged from her in a low and furious hiss. "What was _I_ thinking?" she demanded. "You… you… there are so many possible insults for you that I can't even pick one! You…!" Somehow, rather than rising in volume, her voice just seemed to get lower and lower as her temper reached its incoherent heights.

Music Man winced.

"You _didn't even warn us!"_ she settled on, her hand gripping the phone until her knuckles were white.

"I know," he replied quietly. "I didn't even think about that side of it. I'm kind of a selfish person, Roxy." His expression brightened a little. "I never knew that about myself before! Since I left I've been discovering all these things about who I really am-"

"Stop talking now," Roxanne snapped. Whether it was something in her tone or just a reflexive reaction to her anger, amazingly, Music Man's mouth closed with a soft _snap_. He sat stiffly across from her, looking at her with eyes that were visibly wide behind the tint of his shades.

"Okay," she said, taking in a deep breath and trying to get some of her temper to recede. It wasn't easy. "This is an important question, so I want you to think about it before you answer me," she said, very slowly. "Why did you come here?"

Music Man stared at her. He coughed a little. "Well, see, I've playing at the hospital a lot lately. The sick kids really like my music. And I was in the waiting room when I read in this magazine about the 'psychological healing powers of music', so I thought, hey, that could be…" Taking in her expression, he trailed off. Some of the forced lightness faded away from him, and he slumped, his shoulders sagging and his large hands resting on the small ledge in front of him. After a few seconds he reached up and took off his sunglasses, lightly pinching the bridge of his nose in a gesture that was probably more subconscious imitation than genuine fatigue. He sighed. "I know you don't have a lot of friends. You know, because of… everything. I guess I felt – I don't know. I tried to ignore it, but after the news story about what you'd done, I couldn't stop thinking about it."

Roxanne let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "So you actually do care," she replied, the note of a question lingering in the comment, bitterness coloring her tone. His head snapped up sharply.

"Of course I do!"

Her temper flared. "Don't say that like it should be obvious!" she said. "It's one thing to decide that you're not going to be the city's hero anymore. It's another to just leave your friends high and dry when they need you. This is the second time you've done this to us, but now, it's _all __**your**__ fault_ that everything's going wrong."

Music Man flinched. "In my defense, he really did build a death ray and try to trap me in the observatory. I mean, it _could_ have gone that way-"

"No it couldn't have!" Roxanne cut him off. "And it didn't, so you need to tell those old colleagues of yours that you aren't dead." She let out a breath, running one hand through her hair in agitation.

"I can't," he replied sadly.

"_Why?_" she demanded. "Why is your reputation still so valuable to you?" Her voice broke a little bit, despite her intentions, and she could feel hot prickles at the corners of her eyes that warned of the potential for tears. "With your power, no one can make you do anything you don't want to. People might resent you for not helping them anymore, but no one can _force_ you to be a hero."

Music Man raised his hands in the universal gesture for 'lower your voice', which didn't do a lot for her mood, and darted a glance around at the other convicts and their visitors. "Shh," he said. Then he pulled back, his expression turning torn for a moment, before drifting into something like resignation. "I _don't_ care that much about my reputation," he whispered into the receiver. "That's one of the things that's changed about me now. If it was only that, I could live with it. But the Collective has people…" he trailed off a little, sucking in a deep breath. "Look. You don't just retire from being a superhero, Roxy. If the Collective knew that I was alive they'd send someone after me. Someone with powers that _worked_ against mine."

Skepticism was her first reaction to his assertion. Maybe it was because she was still predisposed to think of him as indestructible, maybe it was because she no longer found herself inclined to put a lot of faith in him. "What would they do?" she asked. "_Threaten_ you into saving babies from burning buildings and thwarting evil plans?"

"Pretty much, yeah," he replied sincerely. "They wouldn't be able to arrest me or anything like that. But they'd make my life hell." He shifted in his seat, giving the room around them another anxious glance. "They have ways of dragging people back in whenever they try and get out. They say it's for the sake of protecting the world, and I think they really believe that, but it's not pretty. You think Metro City sees a lot of action now?" Shaking his head, he moved a little closer to the barrier between them. "They'd send every villain and anti-hero on the planet after me, hunting me down, challenging me to fights, _forcing_ me into confrontations until I cracked. They'd burn down my hideouts. They'd figure out where I was hosting gigs and attack there, too. My musical career would be finished – even if I didn't rise to their bait, my audience would probably all get killed."

There was a careful sort of quiet between them as Roxanne turned that idea over in her head. She was at war with herself, she found. The part of her that still considered this man (be he Music or Metro) a friend, the part that had gambled on her little stunt being enough to get him to seek her out, wanted to think the best of him, and believe that he was telling the truth. He'd come, after all. On the other hand, the part of her that hated his guts wanted to accuse him of being a selfish liar and somehow strangle him with the phone cord. Only one of those reactions was in any way practical, however, so she pursed her lips and inhaled deeply through her nose. "If that's true," she said, lowering her own voice to a whisper. "Then would you help me if I could promise that no one would find out that you're still alive?"

Music Man gave her a long, pensive look. Her heart began to sink, and just as she was beginning to think that all of her insanely stupid plans really _would_ be for naught, he gave her a look that reminded her just a _little_ bit of his old self. Not the public hero, but the guy who'd tell her tacky jokes on the way back from Megamind's lair, with the wind whipping around them, seeming to blow away some of his shiny veneer. He pointed firmly at her.

"Alright," he said. "But only this time. And only because this really is my fault."

Relief broke through her chest almost painfully, and it was strange that _that_ was what finally got the tears to spill out of the corners of her eyes.

* * *

Step one was, of course, breaking out of prison, which was accomplished by simply having the brain bots blow out one of the walls. Since her cell wasn't high security, that was pretty easy. All she needed to do was have Music Man deliver her the communicator for them (which he did by way of super-speed) and then she spent four hours whispering requests into it until one the bots finally got the idea. By then Music Man was waiting for her outside, and whisked her away before the guards could even figure out what had happened. The bots were none too pleased to be called into his presence, but only seemed to express it by ineffectually gnawing at his elbows from time to time.

Step two was reclaiming her gear, some of which she'd stashed before her 'heist', and some of which was confiscated by the police. She took care of the former while Music Man and the bots handled the latter, working together to make the theft _look_ like it was machine-orchestrated, but using his powers to facilitate things and ensure success. He kept a low profile, dressing dark and moving quickly whenever he could, and every time he came back from such 'errands' she found herself nearly jumping out of her skin due to his sudden appearances.

"That's why I hardly ever used super-speed," he told her. "People find it really unnerving."

"You don't say," she'd generously replied, before giving him the break-down of 'step three'. The tricky step.

Music Man hesitated on that one. "I don't know," he said. "What if he suspects something?"

Roxanne sighed, resting her forehead in her palm. They'd retreated to his old hideout rather than her home, figuring it was less likely to get searched, and the fake dust and gloomy atmosphere were just reminding her how mind-numbingly frustrating her accomplice really was. "Of course he's going to suspect _something_," she said. "We just need to make sure that he doesn't suspect the _right thing_. That's why the bots are going with you again," she pointed out. He didn't look very reassured.

"The last two times there weren't any people involved…"

"Yeah, it's a little riskier, that's true," she agreed. "But sometimes you just have to take risks if you want to get things done."

He mulled that over for a little while, a curious expression on his face. "Huh," he said. "Never really thought of it like that. I guess I haven't ever had to risk a lot before. I guess I never really had things that I was afraid of _losing_ before."

…Okay. She supposed she could feel kind of bad for him about that. Also, vaguely insulted. They _were_ friends after all. Sort of. With a slight roll of her eyes she patted him on the shoulder, then pulled out the holographic watch. She'd spent almost as much time tinkering with it, trying to learn it, as she had the hover bike, but she was fairly confident that she knew what most of the dials and buttons did. Holding it away from herself, she turned on the scanner and let the lasers do their work. Then she strapped it pointedly to Music Man's wrist, turned the face, and a second later found herself staring at her own stunned reflection. Success.

"Don't break it," she warned.

Reaching up, Music Man patted his – her – his cheek, and then gave a rather bemused look down at his chest and hips. "This is very weird," he informed her in her own voice.

"Yeah, this is probably going to be a brain-bleach memory for both of us," she agreed. "Let's get it over with quickly."

Music Man turned. She caught his arm before he took off with the bots, though, making him pause and look back at her. "Don't let him catch you using super-speed, though," she reminded, remembering just who she was talking to, and what his definition of 'quickly' might be.

He rolled the copy of her eyes at her. It was creepy. "Duh," he said, the surreal tint to the moment deepening. Then he surprised her by patting her hand briefly, almost reassuringly, and took off with a somewhat heavier stride than she generally employed, their borrowed black cape trailing behind him and the shoulder spikes catching the moonlight as he headed up the steps.

When he came back two hours later, an unconscious Dinomight was slung over his shoulder, and a look of general triumph was on his copy of her face.

* * *

"You've gone too far this time, Miss Ritchi!" Dinomight shouted.

'Miss Ritchi' was probably the worst name for a supervillainess ever, Roxanne mused, taking off down the streets of Metro City as fast as she could, the hover bike whirring sharply with each swerve and turn. She clutched the handles as tight as she could, once again ridiculously grateful for the shields Megamind had put in. Otherwise she probably wouldn't have had the nerve to cut things as closely as she did.

"Just try and stop me, you prehistoric poser!" she tossed back. Then she winced. _Prehistoric poser?_ Where the heck had she pulled _that _from? Though, all things considered, she probably already knew the answer to that. The wind whipped around the bike's shield and she sped up a little. On foot, Dinomight was closing the distance, his scaled legs pumping lightning fast as he wove between traffic and tried to get a hand on her bumper. Scowling, Roxanne hit one of the switches underneath the speedometer. A jet of blue flames erupted from the tailpipe and scorched over the superhero's scaled fingers. There was a brief delay, then a pained yelp, and he fell back a few steps. "Is that the best you can do?" she jeered.

"It doesn't matter how fast you go, Miss Ritchi. Justice is inescapable!" he called back. Overhead, she could distantly hear the sound of police helicopters closing in.

_Careful_, Roxanne thought, feeling the color drain from her face as she urged the bike between two lanes of traffic, and took off in the direction of the waterfront. The sides of a pair of cars cut shockingly close as she did. The drivers and passengers gaped as she whipped by. She let out a harsh laugh, surprised at how clearly it rang out from her, carrying down the road in her wake. "Metroman used to think like that, too. But just look at what happened to _him!"_

Dinomight roared, obviously consumed by a moment of righteous anger, and his feet hit the ground with increased ferocity, cracking the pavement and sending little bits of concrete spraying upwards. He reached for her, but misjudged, aiming his grab too high and rebounding off of the bike's shields instead of catching it on the side. The blow forced him to stumble back again. As Roxanne rounded the next corner, she grinned in triumph. Megamind's ransacked lair was dead ahead. Leaning over, she spoke into the tiny communicator for remotely commanding the bots, which she'd shoved firmly underneath one of the cape's shoulder-pads. "Go," she hissed. Nothing happened. "Go, go, go, c'mon guys, you know the drill, please…"

A solid moment ticked past. Briefly, she worried that she'd arrived at the point where things finally fell apart. But then vents around the fake observatory opened up, filling the air with dark smoke as the brain bots turned them on. Roxanne swerved counter-intuitively into the darkness, Dinomight still thundering down the road behind her. When she'd driven far enough that she was sure she couldn't be seen anymore, she squeezed the brakes, pulled down on the handle that controlled the bike's altitude, and then sent it lurching awkwardly up, up, until she was hovering well above the domed roof of the building, the engine whirring a little more loudly and her nerves singing in her ears. From her new vantage point she could see the emergency helicopters all the more clearly, though they were (wisely) keeping their distance. When she was confident that she'd gained enough height, she released the altitude handle, and dared to look down. The entire base of the lair had been surrounded in darkness. Dinomight was nowhere to be seen, but the patterns of the smoke below her would imply that he was still running around down there, trying to find her. Presumably, he wouldn't know that the hover bike could fly so high.

A few sparks lit up at the top tendrils of smoke, and a moment later her trio of brain bots emerged, hovering around the bike. Carefully, holding her breath all the while, Roxanne reached out and clicked off the shield. Then she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled, internally crossing her fingers. To her relief the bots obediently swarmed onto the back of the bike. She hastily clicked the shield back on, feeling much better once it was there again. That done, she reached into her pocket, pulled out her cellphone, and hit '3' on the speed dial.

It rang once before it picked up.

"Go," she said.

_Sorry, hon,_ she thought, right before the lair exploded.

It was quite a bit like the last exploding observatory she'd been witness too. The air turned frighteningly hot and the ground shook, red flame arcing through the black smoke below, swallowing it up and consuming the walls of the lair. The explosion came in several large, dusty parts, and each time the shockwaves caused the bike to lurch terribly, until she was forced to take herself out over the water – both to avoid the heat and flames, and to keep from inhaling the dust that had begun to billow up. She probably should have thought that one through better, she decided, keeping one eye on the destructive display until the last resounding _boom_ had shaken through the air. The fake observatory dome groaned loudly as it collapsed in on itself, crashing in bits and pieces into the inferno below.

All in all, it was quite an extravagantly deadly sight. Roxanne slumped a little against the front of the bike, before reaching back and handing her phone to the nearest brain bot. "Here," she said. "Go ahead and munch on this." Most people didn't orchestrate their super-villain plans via cell phone, after all. It was probably better to leave that last call as vague as possible.

The bot didn't need any encouragement, closing its metal jaws around her phone and chewing it apart with a few gleeful little whirrs. She gave it an absent pat, staring down at the lair's wreckage. "He couldn't possibly have survived that," she said, sucking in a breath, waiting.

When the automatic vents kicked in and the smoke finally began to clear, it was to reveal a lot of damaged property, the shattered remnants of Megamind's former workspace, and a single, charred skeleton lying in the midst of it all. Squaring her shoulders, Roxanne gathered enough nerve to let go of both of the bike's handles long enough to stretch her arms out into the air. Then she tossed her head back and laughed as loudly as she could. "Metro City!" she bellowed, wishing she'd been able to figure out how Megamind got his sound system to work. "Your beloved _Dinomight_ is no more!" She added in another laugh for good measure (fighting off a cough towards the end) lowered the bike's altitude a little bit, and took off again.

_Holy crap,_ she thought, as she zipped between buildings, weaving and winding her way through the city until she had backed down one last, darkened alleyway, and dared to finally stop. _I can't believe I just did that._ Her heart was beating so fast that she was _sure_ it couldn't be good for her, and her arms and legs were shaking a little as she slid off of the seat, letting out a heavy breath. A second later she blinked, and found herself face-to-face with Dinomight.

"Gah!"

He took a reflexive step back from her. "What? What?" he demanded, looking sharply around the alley. "Did someone see us?"

Placing a hand on her chest, Roxanne tried desperately to get her heart to stop pounding against her ribs. She sucked in several deep breaths. "No," she said, reflexively giving the alley another once-over. But there were no windows. Just a few brick walls and the open sky overhead. Even if anyone had seen her drive in, they wouldn't have seen him enter, at least. "Just… sneaking up. Unsettling. Remember?" she explained, gesturing pointedly towards him. His shoulders slumped in relief, and he nodded in understanding before extending his right arm towards her.

Carefully, Roxanne deactivated the holographic watch, and took it off of his wrist. Dinomight's scaly face was instantly replaced with Music Man's bearded visage.

"I've gotta say, though, you're really good at that," she informed him, tucking the watch into her pocket.

Music Man grinned. "I never thought I'd have to fake dying more than once," he admitted. "It was actually kind of fun. I can sort of see why the little guy was always so stoked for this, it is _much_ more interesting when you're on the losing side."

"In your case? It's probably just the novelty of it," Roxanne pointed out. "Anyways, you're not _really_ losing when everything is going according to plan."

He gave her a look and then let out a sigh. "You know, I never told you this before, but the way you always bring me down is really kind of annoying."

She blinked. He adopted an expression that seemed like it was half-introspection, and half the annoyance he'd just mentioned. For a solid minute she just stared back at him. "…I _bring you down?"_ she finally demanded, shaking her head and wondering if he even realized how petulant he sounded. He shrugged.

"You're always sniping and being sarcastic and throwing amplifiers at my head."

"_Twice_ is not _always_."

"See? Like that."

Roxanne scowled at him. "So we're just overlooking all the gushing media praise I've given you over the years, then?" she asked. "Mr. My-Heart-Is-An-Ocean-Inside-A-Bigger-Ocean?"

He heaved another, heavier sigh. "That stuff doesn't count. You weren't even really talking about _me_, you were just building up the already excessive hype for 'Metro Man'," he asserted. "Since I started embracing my true identity, you haven't paid me a _single_ compliment. Even the little guy at least said my music was good."

"Seriously? You really want to complain about this right now?"

Music Man gave her a look that was eerily similar to the petulant stubbornness that Megamind sometimes showed. She felt a headache coming on. "Fine," she exhaled. Nice, nice, what could she say about him that was nice? She looked him over for one awkwardly drawn-out moment. When she opened her mouth again, a bit of his anticipation showed on his face. "Um… your beard makes you look kind of like a lumberjack?"

Anticipation with replaced with momentary befuddlement. Music Man mouthed the word 'lumberjack?' to himself, and Roxanne quickly attempted to change the subject before things got any worse. "Look, we don't know how much time we have," she reminded him, drawing him pointedly back to the task at hand. "The Collective took ages to decide to come for Megamind, but if what Slasher said to me was true, then they might be quicker to react this time around."

Music Man nodded quickly. "Oh, it's probably true. Slasher knows _everything_," he said.

"He does not!" Roxanne suddenly snapped. She surprised even herself with the abruptness of her reaction. "You'd have to be a pretty damn observant person to know _everything_, and from what I've seen, he isn't even cut out to be an amateur detective. He wouldn't even taste the dust!" Reigning in her temper, she forced herself to calm down and move on before the obvious questions could be asked. "But that's beside the point. I've got to get going, and you," she pointed a finger at his chest. "Need to make sure that the _real_ Dinomight doesn't escape and ruin everything."

He frowned at her. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that part," he said. "It's not that I really mind volunteering the time and everything. I need to practice my classical instruments, so, I figured I could do both at once and kill two birds with one stone. But how am I supposed to keep him from recognizing me if you're taking the doo-hickey disguise watch with you?"

Roxanne gave him a long, long look.

Music Man started guilelessly back at her.

"…Seriously?" she asked.

He spread his arms. "Well, it's a legitimate problem! If I don't have a disguise then sooner or later he might notice that I look _a lot__ like_ Metroman. It's not as if I can just shove on a pair of glasses and fool him completely! He's a superhero!" he complained.

Sighing, Roxanne ran a hand down the side of her face. "You take an opaque, fabric sack of some kind," she said. "And whenever he's conscious and you're not using super-speed, you _shove it over his head_." Really. It was like he hadn't even been _there_ for all of those kidnappings. She was starting to wonder if he'd just been humming country jingles in his head every time he zipped into the rescue, and just tuning the rest of it out.

His shoulders relaxed a little, as though a genuine concern had been lifted off of them. "Oh," he said. "Huh. That's a good idea."

"Yeah. Can't imagine where I got it from," she replied. Almost immediately she regretted the blithe comment, though, as something in her chest constricted, and how messed up was it that talking about the basic practicalities of kidnapping could fill her with a sudden and painful nostalgia? Forcing the feeling down, she nodded to Music Man, and made her way back towards the hover bike.

_Please let this work_, she thought. _Please_.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thanks for reading! Next chapter, we'll find out what's going on from Megamind's side of the equation.


	2. Boredom

The first thing he'd done that morning was sit straight up in bed, the blankets tumbling down to his hips, an exclamation of victory hanging just on the tip of his tongue. He was sleepy and slightly disoriented, and his brain was still clicking together the thoughts that had reached their 'eureka' moment in his sleep, but as the warmth of the room and the cold, grey light slipping in through the windows struck him, he remembered himself. Carefully swallowing back his triumphant cry, he looked beside himself. Roxanne was curled up there, her short hair sticking every which-way on her pillow, one of her arms shoved underneath her head. Slowly, he let out a breath. She was still asleep. Good. He always felt badly when he woke her up, especially since he was beginning to realize that the average human couldn't operate on just four hours of rest and a couple of sugar rushes.

But the idea was still demanding that he pay attention to it, sending a surge of excitement through him. So, rather than lying back down, he tip-toed carefully out of bed, crossed the room, and headed for the bathroom. One of the brain bots whirred at him curiously from the corner beside the closet, but he shushed it and hurried through his morning ablutions. When he crept back out again Roxanne had rolled over to the middle of the bed and was hogging all of the blankets around herself. Warmth spread through his chest like the tenacious threads of a spider web, and he moved over to her, looking at her for a solid moment before he leaned down and pressed a kiss onto her cheek.

Sometimes, he still had trouble believing it all.

Roxanne sighed and murmured something unintelligible, and he left her to her rest, dressing quickly and finding Minion already awake in the kitchen. Skipping breakfast, they left in a hurry – it was still novel, having to _drive to_ his lair, rather than simply sleeping around all of his projects – and Minion expressed an obliging interest in their work and what little he could properly convey about his idea. He was mentally sketching out plans as they drove, and hurried into the false observatory as quickly as he could once they finally arrived. The lair's brain bots all perked up and shadowed him, familiar enough with his moods that they knew better than to swarm him when he was in such a determined mood. The computer systems sprang to life as Minion gave them his voice code. The air tasted familiarly of metal shavings and chemicals and the sparking-tang of energy currents. _It's going to be a good day,_ he thought, humming _Bad to the Bone_ under his breath and calling up the schematics for his water filter plans.

It was funny. When he'd first started his reform, he'd thought that inventing 'useful' things would be considerably more boring than inventing his tools of mayhem. And, on some level, they were certainly less flashy (particularly since the mayor had requested that he stop installing laser-lights and decorative spikes onto the ones for city use) but they were also much more challenging. Maybe it was just because he'd been doing the villain thing for so long that he'd exhausted a lot of his ideas. His new job required him to stretch his brain in completely different directions, which was pretty much the _opposite_ of boring.

"Minion, get the three-dimensional map online," he requested, absently straightening one of his gloves and frowning thoughtfully at the computer screen.

"Will do, sir," Minion cheerfully agreed.

_Yes_, Megamind thought to himself. _Yes, that could work. All I'd need to do is – _

'Back in Black' started blaring from the overhead sound system, loud and urgent. Blinking in surprise, he looked up, and then switched the screen he was using to the various feeds coming in from the brain bots that were patrolling the city. He'd programmed them to sound off different alarms when something strange was going on in the city. Of course, being floating robotic brains, they sometimes had very peculiar ideas of what constituted 'strange' (Bot No.451 _still_ kept sounding off with 'Come on Feel the Noise' whenever it caught someone putting ketchup on a hotdog) but so far the system had been incredibly handy. He'd started out with regular alarms, and then switched to music because regular alarms sounded _awful_. Like someone had taken the old shool bell and run it through a wood-chipper.

"Where's the alarm coming from?" he asked Minion.

"Hold on, sir, I'm checking," Minion replied. "There's some interference with our connection today."

Megamind sighed. "Make a note for the to-do list – 'Improve City's Communication Lines'. Maybe we'll actually be able to get that _done_ now that no one will stop us halfway," he suggested, scanning the various feeds by eye and looking to see if there were any fireballs or screaming crowds or masked individuals toting machine guns within his immediate line of sight. The surveillance around City Hall immediately caught his eye. He saw spandex and flying and with an audible sigh turned away from the screen, not even bothering to take particular note of the details. Heroism always seemed to be required at the most inopportune times. Just last week he'd been right in the middle of… well, the bottom line was that neither he nor Roxanne had been terribly pleased with the sudden call to arms.

"Alright, let's head out. This'll have to wait," he decided, feeling disappointment at the interruption to his work, but also a certain tremulous touch of excitement at going out to do his _purpose_ for another day. "Get out the Super Incredibly Awesome Not-Doom Suit, Minion. Brain bots! Daddy needs his battle outfit and the Black Mamba Mark Two!" He clapped, and the lair sprang to life as he moved to suit up and Minion got their best exo-suit ready for action. Two brain bots opened the display case for his cape (he still preferred wearing black when it wasn't a special occasion, and thankfully no one had objected to that) and another handful zipped over to open up the case containing his leather combat clothes. At the back of the lair one of the large, black exo-suits whirred to life, its blue lights casting a harsh glow over everything.

"Shall I open the hatch, sir?" Minion asked, finishing the activation sequence and then moving to pull on his own set of hover boots.

"Yes! And let's get the system raring to go around City Hall," he agreed, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "It's time for a show."

* * *

Dark clouds billowed up from the vents around the City Hall building, obscuring the view to onlookers and ominously lining the horizon. The brain bots swarmed, their domed heads throwing sparks into the shadows, making the entire morass look like a concentrated storm that had descended between buildings. The sound system kicked on with a low _boom_. Megamind grinned, cutting the thrusters on his exo-suit and landing just in front of the building's steps, Minion close behind. He looked, but couldn't spy his opponent straight away.

"Who dares challenge Megamind, Defender of Metrocity?" he bellowed into the microphone in front of him, planting his hands upon his hips and striking a suitably intimidating…ly heroic pose. The limbs of the exo-suit, of course, mirrored the gesture. In the distance he could just hear the sirens of emergency vehicles coming to cordon off the scene.

For a moment there was no response. "Well?" he tried. Another minute ticked by, and he felt a twinge of exasperation. "Oh, c'mon! I _know_ you're out there. There are only two kinds of people who go around dressing like figure skaters and flying under their own power, so you're either a villain or a-"

_Thwoom_.

Megamind let out a completely dignified and in no way womanly shriek of surprise as something smashed into the front of his exo-suit, striking with enough force to nearly topple it over. The glass viewer cracked straight down the middle. He spied a brief flash of long hair and bare skin before it was gone again, vanishing into the clouds he had generated. Eyes wide, he immediately attempted to regain control of his systems, almost putting his foot through a nearby fountain and swinging one extended arm carefully through the air. "Minion! Did you see her? Or possibly an extremely effeminate him?" he demanded.

No reply.

"Minion?" he tried again, looking to where his friend had touched ground – but there was no sign of him. Dread began to climb in his throat. Reaching out, he quickly activated the suit's emergency shield, turned on the thrusters again, and headed up to gain a bit of altitude to see things better by (maybe the smoke had actually been a _bad_ idea for once). Hopefully he'd be able spy either Minion or their enemy. His muscles were incredibly tense as he went through the motions, a few beads of sweat starting to form at his temples. That had been a _hard_ hit. Like, _serious_-super-powers hard. He wracked his brain for recent events news, trying to think if there'd been any mention of someone causing havoc on such a level in any of the nearby cities. But he couldn't think of anything.

The brain bots started buzzing and sparking. _Wham_. The suit was struck again. Anticipating it a little better that time, Megamind reached out and tried to capture his assailant as she flew smack-dab into him. He curled into the blow, closing one hand around the strong, almost-definitely-female form, and flinched as there was a tearing groan of metal and wires. The color drained from his face. Whoever he'd caught was _ripping through_ the exo-suit, curling back the fingers of the hand and pounding rigidly against his shield. Blue sparks danced across his view as the shield strained under the pressure. An instant later the brain bots closed in, reacting to his obvious distress. Their red-hot lasers cut through the black clouds and struck the figure in his grasp cleanly, but just as he thought he heard a somewhat gratifying cry of pain there was a burst of white light, and half of their number exploded.

_What!_ he thought, horrified. As the light cleared little bits of metal and wires rained down to the ground below. The bright bloom hadn't just overloaded the bots or damaged them. It had blown them into **dust**. _There won't be enough left of them to repair…_

Another explosion took out a second cluster of bots, and the tip of a green cape swirled past the periphery of his vision. With a final shrieking groan the hand on his exo-suit snapped off, falling a ways before vanishing in the same disturbing, bright white light that had taken out his brain bots. A moment later he found himself thrown back by another determined strike to his shield. The generator for it only really covered the main carriage of the suit – he'd found that he could only make them so big – and it seemed that his enemy (or _enemies,_ as the case was) had figured that out, because the next hit was aimed at its left knee. "Minion!" he tried over the communication channel again. Terrifying silence was the only response he got. He rocked back and forth inside the cockpit of the suit as the blows came rapid-fire then, brain bots exploding all around him, his shield flickering and beginning to emit a high-pitched whine that probably wasn't a good sign.

In fact he was kind of thinking that it might explode soon. The bigger ones were always just a _little_ unstable.

The high-pitched whine got even more high-pitched and whinier. There was nothing for it, he realized, as the exo-suit's leg finally snapped off and was subsequently disintegrated. He was going to have to use the emergency escape, and then… somehow do something else. But survival was paramount. His fist slammed the red 'eject' button just as another blow sent him rocketing backwards, thrusters shrieking and a clattering, shearing sort of sound informing him that the emergency failsafe had just… well, failed.

"Oh, curses," he breathed. His life went flashing behind his eyes – the stupid mistakes, the happy accidents, the few glorious triumphs. His inventions. Minion.

Roxanne.

The shield went up in a flurry of blue sparks, the whine finally reaching its peak and shattering like a champagne flute in front of an opera singer. He reflexively folded his arms over his head and curled into his seat, trying to mitigate the damage somewhat as light filled up his vision…

Wait. That wasn't explode-y electrical light. He blinked, his mouth going completely dry as he realized that he'd been surrounded in a kind-of-glowing sphere of white energy, the bubble hovering around him, suspending his person, his seat, and a small portion of the exo-suit's cockpit up over City Hall. A caped figure in brown and green was hovering several feet in front of him. His hands were shining with the same light that had blown up the brain bots. The same white light that was currently keeping him from dropping to his death. One palm was extended out in his direction.

"Surrender," the figure said. "You're finished."

Megamind blinked.

"Uh… alright. Yes. That would… seem to be the thing to do. At this point," he agreed, freezing up and feeling an odd combination of relief and discomfort. Then he blinked again. In addition to the whole 'glowing hands' thing, the man in the air was wearing a strange, stylized sort of army helmet. It would have just been one of those stupid little details that a _lot_ of hackneyed villain-types employed in their costuming (like clown make-up – what was _with_ that?) except that he found himself recognizing the look of it. It was from one of Roxanne's old interviews, back when Metrocity had first unofficially appointed her as chief purveyor of all news pertaining to the epic struggle between good and evil. "Wait. Wait! You're Commander Courage!" he realized, stunned. "Wait! There's been some sort of misunderstanding! I'm not evil anymore!" Lifting his hands, he gestured pointedly towards himself and tried to offer an earnest expression of non-villainy. He even tossed in a encouraging nod for good measure.

The commander's brows furrowed. But before Megamind could get any further, a handful of the remaining brain bots swarmed onto the flying figure's back, making loud popping and buzzing sounds of anger.

"Courage!" a female voice shouted in anger. The bots ripped and tore at him with their clawed arms, forcing his attention away. The mostly-transparent sphere around Megamind flickered and went out, but before he could even manage a real shout of fear, a familiar, gorilla-esque arm reached through the air and caught him. Minion held him at his side, hovering at mid-level with the swirling smoke.

"Oh, thank evil heaven," he sighed, forgetting himself in the moment. "Minion. I was afraid that something had…" he trailed off as he looked up. Minion was staring at him, but his expression was bizarrely blank and detached, his eyes glassy and his jaw slack. "Minion?"

The arm holding him was extended sharply outwards, then, and Megamind found himself face-to-face with the scantily clad woman who had struck the first blow against him. A shock of denial and betrayal and confusion swept through him as he realized that his life-long friend was apparently handing him over to one of their attackers, before the woman scowled, and drew one fist back.

"Bid thy consciousness farewell, murderer, for 'tis bound to escape thee," she said.

"Wha-?" he managed. Then she hit him square on the head, and the world went all sorts of fuzzy shades of black.

* * *

"But I didn't really kill him!" he protested for what felt like the millionth time. "Just ask Roxanne Ritchi, alright? She knows. She'll tell you." He thought for a moment. "At least, I'm reasonably certain that she's willing to sell him up the river for me. I mean they used to be friends, but she was _pretty mad_ that he faked his death and she doesn't seem to think that his music is good enough to make up for the whole 'lying and abandonment' thing. I don't know, I thought it was alright. A little mellow for my own tastes of course. Still, what can you expect from a-"

The burly man with bad personal hygiene, who'd been guiding him down the ramp towards the space shuttle, stopped and extended one bladed arm to his chin. "Shut up," he instructed.

Megamind closed his mouth with a barely audible _pop_, his nerves jangling with a fear that he wished desperately could turn into something else for just a little while. Something that wasn't frantic over the lack of knowledge of what had happened to Minion. Something that wasn't worried sick about how Roxanne was taking all of this, and what she must have thought when the freaking _Heroes Collective_ had turned up to arrest him. Something that wasn't the gnawing anxiety that maybe a prison situated in orbit would be significantly harder to escape from than one he'd grown up in. He swallowed hard, and nearly tripped over his own feet as his escort turned his hand back into an actual hand and gave him one sharp, 'encouraging' shove. The shackles they'd put around his arms and wrists twisted painfully.

"Are you sure you d-"

The hand turned back into a blade.

He decided that discretion would probably be a better idea than trying to make a case for himself. Just for the time being. After all, even if the prison _was_ in space, so what? He was a master escape artist. Getting back out again would probably be a walk in the park.

* * *

One-hundred and twenty-eight hours and thirty-three minutes. That was how long he'd been trapped in the horrible confines of his darkened cell. Alone. Letting out a breath, Megamind sat up, blinking into the shadows and resting a hand against the hard frame of his mattress. His joints popped and protested at the movement. Even through the thick walls around him he could hear the hum of the prison's power generators, the whirr of the mechanisms which kept the cell doors electrified, and the distant shriek of a voice screaming somewhere in incoherent rage.

The jumpsuit they'd given him wasn't orange. It was, instead, a dark sort-of-purple color, which somehow did even _less_ for his complexion, and itched almost constantly against his wrists.

Thirty-four minutes. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. His own breath echoed in his skull. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Right on cue, the station's lights blinked on, bright and just slightly off-yellow. There was a faint hum as the environmental filters kicked into high gear, and some of the distant screaming finally died down. With the lights on he got a good, clear view of the whole lot of _nothing_ which comprised the contents of his cell. It was a stark place, bereft of any hint of color on the walls, floor, or ceiling, with Spartan off-grey furnishings that left no corner of the room to hide in, and few places that could disguise any sort of contraband. If the inmates could even _get_ contraband in _outer space_. There were no screens or windows anywhere to be seen. Nothing to look out of or into, nothing to read or write with, not even a _hint_ of decoration to distract himself by. Nothing comfortable or warm or familiar. No brain bots. No Minion. No Roxanne.

It was hell. A slow, boring hell, and he was sure that if he didn't find something to do with himself _soon_ then he was going to jump out of his own skin and float away. His mind was rioting against its inactivity, his body wracked with energy that had no outlet. His straights were so dire that he'd been reduced to _counting minutes_, feeling his own life tick by in the cavernous swell of the space prison, constantly aware of the silence even when he tried desperately to dredge up some mental distraction. At first he'd tried going through the idea he'd been working on before his arrest. But something about the cell, the space around him, made focusing on that incredibly difficult. It was like the more complex functions of his mind had been covered in non-stick spray, and whenever he reached for those thoughts he just found himself sliding off. He was _sure_ that the effect had been manufactured somehow. There was probably some kind of device in the walls or chemical in the air, or, well, maybe they'd even implanted something in his brain (gah) in order to keep him from devising his usual schemes.

One-hundred and twenty-nine hours and nine minutes. The low smacking sound of footsteps on the space stations' floor began to sound off at the end of the hallway. Scowling, Megamind stood up, brushing himself off and positioning himself so that he was a little bit closer to the electrified entryway of his cell. The door – in fact, the entire wall around it, too – was completely transparent, but gave him only a limited view of the empty hallway and the blank wall on the other side of it. A letter '7' was etched onto the top of the probably-not-glass in a sharp off-white. His fingers still stung from his few attempts at bypassing it.

The footsteps were odd. They were soft and slapped just a little, like bare feet. Over the course of his stay Megamind had noticed that various heroes took shifts manning his orbital cage. The schedule seemed fairly random. One day it had been that hard-hearted Amazonian woman who'd punched him out who was prowling around. Then it had been the bot-slaying weirdo with the glowing hands for about thirteen hours, before switching to the chain-smoker with the bad personality for the next eleven. He wasn't sure if they planned it that way so that their respective villains wouldn't be able to take advantage of their absences (which seemed likely) or if the job just went to whoever had time for it (also quite possible). He'd never known Metroman to take any extended leaves from the city – though, given how fast he moved, he could probably come and go however he pleased from any number of places.

The steps drew closer. Megamind schooled his features into an expression of disdainful superiority, leaning against one of the walls of his cell and stretching his neck out as high as it would go.

The hero who came into view was considerably more naked than most. Which wasn't to say that he was entirely without clothes, he at least had on a… tiny white speedo. That looked suspiciously like underwear. But that was about it, which would explain the odd sound of his footsteps. Unlike most people, the current prison guard wasn't wearing any shoes, for some reason. On his own he was the sort of sight that a person would stare at even if they _weren't_ confined to a cell full of the most boring non-things imaginable, if only in a 'can't stop gawking at the car-crash' sort of a way, but Megamind only spared him a glance before his eyes moved straight to the figure trailing behind him. His shoulders stiffened and his jaw went slack, pretention failing in the face of shock.

"Minion!" he exclaimed. Somehow or another the hair had been removed from his suit, to be replaced with shiny green-blue paint, but it was still undeniably _him_. No other fish in existence looked like that. Or, you know, how had the brain capacity to operate a robotic body.

Minion didn't react to him at all. But Speedo Man paused briefly in his steps, glancing in his direction. He raised an eyebrow at Megamind.

"You actually named it _Minion?"_ he asked disdainfully.

Taking in the comment and every offensive nuance present therein, Megamind opted to ignore it in favor of trying to get Minion's attention again. There was a time and a place for banter. "Minion, what are you doing? What's going on?"

"He won't answer you," Speedo Man sniffed.

Looking between the two of them, a realization began to form in his mind. Granted, as he got the idea, it seemed a little bit obvious, but the prison was making him _extremely_ out-of-sorts. "You!" he snapped, anger boiling in his gut, fists clenching tightly. "What have you done to him? You're… you're _mind-controlling_ him somehow, aren't you?" The pieces all fit. The glazed look, the atypical behavior, the lack of reactions.

A shrug was his answer. "Fish are fish," Speedo Man replied. "Apparently even alien fish. I have some slight _talent_ for getting them to obey me. But don't worry," he smirked. "Unlike you, I never task my servants to the purposes of evil."

His scowl turned thunderous. Minion had been under mind control once before. That particular incident had been years ago, and had involved a misfiring with the experimental Mind Ray they'd been working on. Even though Megamind had basically just had him sit down quietly until it wore off (mind-controlled people were _appallingly_ stupid, and therefore also sort of useless) Minion had found the whole ordeal extremely unsettling. It was one of the few times they'd just sort of quietly shelved one of his evil plans and moved on, rather than trying to implement it. They hadn't ever talked too much about it, but he knew enough to know that Minion would find his current situation _extremely_ objectionable, and not just for the obvious reasons. His throat went dry and he glowered through the transparent door of his cell.

"I don't care what's in your itinerary. Let him go," he said.

"Well now, let me think about that," Speedo Man replied, folding his arms and cocking his head to one side. "Hmm. Obey the whims of an imprisoned hero-killer and set his loyal servant free to do as he pleases, or… not. You make a compelling argument, Landwalker." Still smirking, he turned, and started walking back down the corridor. Minion followed him. Megamind moved even closer to the door of his cell, trying to angle himself so that he could keep them in his line of sight for as long as possible.

"Put him in a cell if you have to! Or just take his suit away!" he tried suggesting, shifting until he could almost feel the electrical current by his ear. "I thought you were supposed to be one of the _good_ guys! Good guys do **not** do this sort of thing, believe me, I have extensive experience involving the intricate differences between various categories of villains and heroes! Three completely different types, even!" No response. "Minion! _Minion!_ Let him go! Metroman isn't dead, you can't punish us for killing him when he _isn't dead!_" He lost sight of the pair, and reflexively leaned forward to try and prevent that. A shock ran through his ear. He fell back, cursing, lifting one hand to cover it and then – in a fit of atypical temper – reaching out and punching one hand against the transparent barrier in front of him. The charge lanced across his knuckles and up through his wrist before he yanked himself back. Then the pain hit, and he pulled his arm closer to himself, sliding down against the wall beside him as his burnt skin protested its mistreatment and promised blisters in the near future. Each breath he sucked in seemed to echo in his skull.

He had to get out. He had to save Minion. He had to go _home_. It had only been a few days (one-hundred and twenty-nine hours and seventeen minutes) but he knew they wouldn't be able to last long as they were.

It was just… he couldn't figure out how to actually do it. Presumably there was a shuttle craft which delivered the various heroes to and from the station in order to guard them. High-jacking that would probably be the only way to get back to Earth. With the seemingly random shift changes, however, and the fact that the only things they let him handle were made out of various types of _paper_, orchestrating such an escape was easier said than done. By necessity he'd have to take out at least two heroes. On his own. Functioning at a fraction of his brain capacity, with no tools or inventions and their, you know, _super-powers_ to contend with. And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that he hadn't managed to find a way to bypass his individual _cell door_ yet.

The feeling of self-loathing and failure working its way through his ribcage threatened to drag him down to the lowest he'd ever been.

"Please don't scream," a soft voice said.

Megamind nearly jumped out of his skin. If there was one surefire way to get a person to scream (and he'd done extensive research on the subject) it was sneaking up on them and saying _that_. Whipping around, he stared towards the back of his cell – where there definitely hadn't been anyone about three seconds ago – and obligingly let out a surprised yelp of masculine indignation.

There was someone standing there. Right there. Like he'd just teleported in, although he probably hadn't, because Megamind had been working on teleportation since he was thirteen and he was pretty sure he'd have heard about it if another super villain or hero or whoever had cracked that code. Secret passage, then, maybe? He swallowed, staring wide-eyed at the man who was just sort of standing there. At least the individual himself wasn't exactly terror-inspiring. He was short, and bald (presumably by choice, because he looked human enough) with dark eyebrows and a pair of thick framed glasses resting in front of overly large brown eyes. For a second Megamind thought that he was wearing the purple jumpsuit of the prison's inmates. But then he realized that the shade was off, and that the outfit was actually a tight, one-piece spandex suit, with a little brain-shaped sigil etched in red on the front and some kind of built-in backpack across the shoulders.

The strange young man raised his hands, looking pensive. "No, no, it's alright," he insisted.

"Where did you come from?" Megamind asked, looking around the walls of his cell. "Is there a secret entrance somewhere? Oh please tell me there's a secret entrance somewhere, because that would actually be **really** useful…"

His visitor shrugged rather sheepishly. "There isn't. I'm sorry," he replied. "This place was sort of designed to be inescapable. Putting in secret exits and entrances would have been counter-productive. Like windows," he added, gesturing vaguely towards the blank walls. "Issues of aesthetics and comfort were abandoned for security purposes."

"…Well that sucks," Megamind muttered to himself. There was an awkward pause. "So… um… that just leaves me with teleportation. Or hallucination. Or you could be lying, which, I mean, I don't know you, so there's that." He coughed, darting an awkward glance sideways and anxiously tapping the tips of his fingers together. What exactly did one _do_ when an utter stranger suddenly appeared in their supposedly inescapable prison cell?

Slowly, the other man nodded in understanding. Then he moved back a step, reached out, and extended his arm clear through the wall behind him. He didn't even so much as flinch as the limb disappeared right up to his elbow. Megamind did, though, his jaw dropping, and his eyes going huge. "You can phase through solid objects!" he realized. There were incredible implications to that. It would have to be kind of the opposite principal of the one his new shield system ran on, probably, where… where… if…

His thoughts stuttered and skidded. He raised his hands to either side of his skull and let out an involuntary groan of frustration.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," his unexpected visitor said, immediately returning his arm to his side. "Maybe I should go…"

"No!" Megamind snapped, dropping his hands and stepping forward, as if he could somehow stop him. "No, _don't_ leave. Er, unless you really are a hallucination. Then it would probably be better for the both of us if you went ahead and did that now. No offence." He wasn't quite far-gone enough to start wishing for dementia as a source of entertainment, he didn't think.

Almost. But not quite.

Mister Moves-Through-Walls let out a huffing laugh, and absently ran one hand over the dome of his skull. "I'm not a hallucination," he promised. Then he shifted, adopting a suspiciously hero-ish stance and nodding. "My name's Jansen. I am – or… _was_, really – the Collective's tech expert." Reaching out, he made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the cell around them. "I was the primary engineer for this station."

Megamind's jaw dropped. He eyes narrowed, and he shook his head, keeping a cautious distance between the two of them. "…Okay…" he said. "You're one of the superheroes."

Jansen nodded. "Yes."

"And you designed the space prison?"

He shrugged. "Not alone. I had some help from several international experts in the field, and a few heroes with _unique_ talents."

"And you can move through walls?"

"Uh… technically, yes."

Megamind noted the hesitation in that answer, but one more part of the obvious puzzle required urgent explanation. "And your name is _Jansen?"_ he demanded. "Seriously? Jansen. _Jansen?_ That's like… that's ridiculous. It isn't even a superhero name. That's a **name**-name." His expression pulled into one of utter distaste. Jansen blinked, his eyebrows arching up. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he cleared his throat and summoned up a response.

"I… I suppose. Um. I've never really introduced myself by my superhero name before," he admitted. "I don't think you'd know it. Most of the newspapers used to just call me Techmaster."

He didn't recognize it, but then, he'd stopped paying attention to conflicts outside of Metrocity around about the time he realized that A: Metroman was much more powerful than the other heroes, and B: he was way smarter than the other criminal masterminds. "Oh. Alright then," Megamind agreed. "So now that _that's_ been cleared up…"

Awkward silence stretched between them.

Jansen straightened his glasses.

Megamind waited.

Eventually, when it seemed that no further commentary would be forthcoming, he threw his hands into the air. "Presumably you used your walking-through-walls ability for a _reason,_ right?" he asked.

Jansen started, then looked faintly embarrassed and nodded rather quickly. "Yes, of course," he agreed. "I'm sorry. I overheard your, um, your discussion with Mermanus. You were saying something about Metroman not being dead, and I…" he trailed off briefly, fidgeting with his glasses again. "I was curious. You don't sound like you're lying. Maybe I can help you."

His mood lifted a little bit, and Megamind felt some of the tension ease from his frame. He swallowed, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm not," he replied, and then took a breath, about to elaborate – it was about _time_ someone started listening to him – when he heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor again. Jansen apparently heard them too, by the way his attention jerked towards the entrance of the cell. Following his gaze, he noted that Speedo Man hadn't yet come into view, and then turned back.

Jansen was gone.

* * *

The Amazonian woman in the red skirt and the metal bikini gave him a dark look as she stood in front of the door to his cell. She was carrying a plate of the usual, mind-numbingly bland food that he'd been subsisting off of since his arrival. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how he wanted to look at it – she was carrying it at chest-height, which meant that the first thing he did when she turned up was zero-in on her considerable cleavage. He wasn't quite sure what to do with that. On the one hand, it wasn't like the view was exactly _bad_. On the other hand, he was sort of sketchy on where 'ogling' (incidental or otherwise) to stood on the scale of Acceptable Boyfriend Behavior. Television and his prison dads had all been notably divergent on the subject. It wasn't as if he would ever consider actually _doing_ anything with the woman, though. His current situation aside, she was kind of terrifying and inexplicably spoke in Ye Olde English and wasn't Roxanne, which were all considerable deterrents. But the train of thought would inevitably lead him to wondering what _Roxanne_ was doing while _he_ was gone, and how long it would be before she started thinking of moving on, and if she'd wait for him and whether or not he'd escape only to find some new guy that he would have to dehydrate because, hey, it wasn't like she was lacking for admirers…

"Hands behind thy head, fiend," the woman instructed him.

Sighing, Megamind did as he was told. He cocked one eyebrow into a mocking expression just for the sake of it. The electrical current in the door died down, and part of the transparent barrier slid back – just enough for his jailer to push his cardboard tray of food inside. It made a light slapping sound as it hit the ground, but the bowl stayed upright, and its contents were thick enough that they didn't splash or spill.

Which was _really great_.

"So listen," Megamind said as the opening snapped shut, and the electrical current came roaring back to life. "I'm just curious. Who built this place? I mean, how did you guys come up with this idea?" he asked carefully. He did his utmost to look harmless and unassuming. For the past few days he'd been on behavior that was so good, the Warden back home would have suspected him of trading places with some cloned look-alike. That had to earn him some points. Didn't it?

The woman gave him an arch look. "To give advantage freely to one who hath killed my kinsman would be folly. I shall not answer thy queries, o master of constructs wicked and dire. Spare thy breath," she replied, before turning promptly on her heel and stalking away.

"Was that a 'no'?" he called after her.

"T'was," she said simply back, not even pausing between steps.

When she was gone, he let his shoulders slump again, and wandered listlessly towards the tray. Plucking it up, he sat with it on his cot, and absently stabbed at the gloop with his cardboard spoon. A few minutes later, when he happened to glance up and saw Jansen standing across from him, he managed not to do much more than stare.

But he stared _really hard_.

"…I was starting to think you were a hallucination," he admitted. The man looked much the same as he had when he'd first appeared and then vanished again several days ago (he'd lost track of his minutes in all of the confusion). Megamind had been on the verge of concluding that he was sort of losing his mind. Maybe as a side-effect from whatever was stopping him from focusing properly. Maybe just in general.

Jansen at least had the decency to look sheepish. "I'm sorry," he said. "Doing this takes a lot out of me. If I'm not paying enough attention, I'll run out of energy and, uh, vanish."

Frowning, Megamind tapped his spoon against the side of his bowl for a moment, and then pushed the whole tray away. He wasn't really in the mood to eat. "What _are_ you doing, anyway?" he asked. "Are you using some sort of device?" He had a theory that it had something to do with the built-in backpack on the other man's shoulders, but didn't want to admit as much. It would make him look clever if he was right, but all factors considered, he was hesitant to draw too much attention to his mental capabilities. Their depletion was incredibly unsettling. Not to mention frustrating.

Jansen blinked hugely behind his glasses. "Oh. No," he replied. "This is a, um, a gift of mine, I guess you could say. Telepathic projection." He ducked his head, as though telepathy was somehow embarrassing, and not, say, really, really cool. "I'm not actually here, in this room with you. It just seems like it."

Megamind stared at him again, as though he could somehow _see_ the evidence for such an ability on Jansen's person. Which he couldn't. So instead he just blurted the first thing that occurred to him. "You aren't reading my mind, are you?" he asked.

"No!" Jansen immediately declared, waving his hands in a frantic gesture which implied that the question had come up before. "No, no, no, of course not! That would be… _incredibly_ rude. Besides, I'm not very good at that part of it," he admitted. "I'm much better at this – projecting consciousness." A smile lit up his face. "It's come in handy a time or two, let me tell you!"

In spite of himself, Megamind felt a twist of jealousy in his gut. He frowned. His own lack of any sort of psychic powers had always been vaguely disappointing to him. After all, he had a huge, incredibly amazing brain that (normally) could think of all sorts of amazing ideas and remember things much more clearly than the average person. It seemed only reasonable to assume that such a brain would come equipped with telepathy or telekinesis or something, but nooo. He couldn't move things by thinking at them (unless installing engines in them counted) and he couldn't read thoughts. He'd never even considered the possibilities for astral projection.

Though, as he did, they seemed kind of limited. It was also severely disappointing to learn that some sort of de-materializing device wasn't involved. If one had been, then he was pretty sure he could have overpowered Jansen and stolen it. There were few people he could confidently say he'd take in a fist-fight, but the diminutive hero definitely looked like one of them.

Jansen smiled a little nervously at him, and cleared his throat. "Um. So. Metroman?" he asked, almost hopefully.

Megamind arched an eyebrow. "Ah yes. My old foe," he found himself replying, leaning back and tenting his fingers. "The whole reason I've been dragged to this interminable torture chamber to begin with."

"You said he was still alive," Jansen agreed with a nod. "Will you tell me about it?"

"Ha! Good luck getting me to _not_ tell you about it!" he blurted, unable to contain his excitement (this seemed like an _opportunity_, dammit, and he was going to seize it) and springing abruptly to his feet. He folded his hands at the small of his back and started pacing the length of his cell, keeping his visitor in the corner of his eye while he did. "I tried to convince your friends, but they wouldn't listen to me. The foolish fools. As if something as pedantic and simple as copper and a solar concentration cannon could ever _really_ destroy him! In hindsight I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't figure it out sooner, but then, I never really imagined that he would want to fake his own death. As far as I could tell he had the good life. I mean, he wasn't the one who got defeated and thrown in jail every few weeks, and I thought he had the girl, and – anyway, that's not important. Apparently he's decided that music is his true calling in life. So, after I'd tricked him into flying into the Metrocity Observatory and was waiting for my cannon to charge with the **full concentrated power of the sun**, he…" Megamind carried on, explaining the story from start to finish, and glossing over some of the more embarrassing/private bits with Roxanne. He was a little proud of himself for managing to reduce the entire Bernard incident to one throwaway sentence ("I was disguised at the time").

When he finished, Jansen had a dazed look about himself. He opened his mouth to say something, then paused, closed it, and ran a hand down the side of his face, skewing his glasses a little. Then he opened his mouth again. "…Music Man?" he finally asked. He sounded utterly befuddled.

Megamind shrugged. "Eh," he said, making a so-so gesture with his hand. "Look. I wouldn't be complaining if it weren't for the whole tetchy issue of my being imprisoned in _space_ and everything. The guy wants to make music. More power to him. Personally, I like the industry I'm in, but then I think about that time when I was briefly considering a career as a specialized scientist rather than a grab-bag evil genius gizmo master and all of the 'could have beens' and I don't know if I'd have been less happy that way, or more, so-"

Jansen tentatively raised a hand, forestalling further comment. "I believe you," he said.

A wash of relief surged through Megamind. It was so strong that he almost fell over. "You… you do?" he double-checked, past experience still bracing him for a let-down.

"I do," Jansen confirmed, letting out a breath and folding his arms. He tapped his chin in consideration. "It's been my experience that when people lie, they attempt to keep their lies within the general realm of plausibility. Frankly your story sounds too preposterous to be made-up."

"_Thank_ you," Megamind replied. "Finally." He let out a stilted sort of laugh, running his fingers across his forehead. "So… what now? You'll tell the others?"

Jansen shook his head a little bit, tapping his chin again. "I would, but I'm afraid it wouldn't do much good. They haven't listened to _me_ in quite some time," he admitted ruefully.

Megamind's expression fell.

"But!" Jansen continued quickly. "But, that doesn't mean I can't do _anything_. I designed this place, remember? Even if I can't convince the others to let you go, I might be able to help you get free on your own."

"How?" he asked. It wasn't that he couldn't see how knowledge of the prison would be incredibly useful for an escape. That was obvious. He just wanted the specifics.

"Well… for starters, there's this," Jansen replied, reaching out a hand and putting it through Megamind's chest. There was a feeling like falling, a strange disorientation edged with something hot and bright at the corners of his perception, and then a sharp _yank_ that made his head pound and his limbs burn. When it cleared he found himself standing in the middle of his cell. Only he was also (according to his eyes) sitting on the corner of his cot, with a blank expression on his face that reminded him uncomfortably of Minion. An unsteady dread coiled through him. He turned accusingly towards Jansen.

"What did you do?" he demanded.

The unassuming hero beamed at him. "I'm projecting the primary part of your consciousness," he replied, gesturing between the two of them. "It took me _years_ to figure out how to do it to someone else. I was actually working on devising a solution the complex problems of the prison's internal energy barriers when I discovered the secret. I won't bore you with the details, but it was quite the feather in my cap when I first succeeded."

"…Oh," Megamind replied. He blinked down at himself, uncertain as to whether or not he was unsettled by the fact that he didn't look – or feel – much different than he normally did. "So just to be one hundred percent clear, you didn't _kill_ me? I'm not a ghost?" he checked.

Jansen sighed, grabbed him by the arm – his hand was burning hot – and tossed him with surprising strength towards the glassy-eyed version of himself that was still sitting on the cot. His vision blanked for a few seconds, and it felt sort of like he was being crushed. He was reminded vividly of the time Titan had sent him smashing into a building. Then he blinked and toppled over, his legs twitching uncontrollably and his shoulder hitting the hard mattress with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

"Don't panic!" Jansen advised. "Just calm down!"

"Oh-that-was-so-weird," Megamind gasped, finally regaining enough control of himself to relax a little bit. He stopped moving. The cell around him swam a bit, and he was pretty sure he was going to have one murderous headache in a few minutes, but still.

Neat.

"Are you ready for the tour?"

* * *

The station's command center was a teeny-tiny room when compared to the types of command centers which Megamind generally employed. Ironically, space was at a premium in space, and so the whole operation was basically just outfitted with a single desk, a chair, and the feeds from several security and maintenance cameras. It was the sort of place the felt incredibly cramped even when two of the three people in it were incorporeal. The desk in front of the consoles was occupied by the scantily clad woman with the odd speech patterns. Jansen had identified her as 'Lady Mythman' (with stipulation that he not ask what had happened to whoever had gone by 'Mythman'). She had her shiny booted feet propped up on a corner of the desk, one eye on the security screens while she talked into a microphone headset she was wearing.

Megamind leaned forward and examined it curiously.

"Who's she talking to?" he whispered out of the side of his mouth.

Jansen shrugged. He'd perched himself on the far end of the desk, underneath a couple of screens which showed the exterior of the space station. "She's probably checking in with the security team on Earth. You don't have to whisper, by the way. She can't hear you."

"If you're sure," Megamind replied, still whispering.

Lady Mythman let out a deep laugh, then, which sent him pin-wheeling backwards in surprise. He meant to catch himself on the wall behind him, but mentally hiccoughed on the distance and instead fell through into the plating and wiring just past it. For a second he froze, his eyes going uncomfortably wide, and swallowed at the sight of several solid objects jutting right through bits of himself. _Okay_, he thought. _Don't panic_. He'd moved through solid objects before, though both of those had been transparent doorways – the one which led to and from his cell, and the one which led to and from the command room. Sucking in an imaginary breath, he took a step forward. Or tried to. But when he went to move he found that it didn't work. His shoulders turned a little and his fingers flexed, but each attempt forward was met with firm resistance. Like he was stuck. But that didn't even make any _sense_, unless there was some sort of energy through the walls which interfered with his astral-projection-whatever-it-was-Jansen-had-done, which would probably be very, very bad.

He pushed harder, but only found himself increasingly restricted. A sharp pang ran through him, defying the logic that he shouldn't feel pain, that there was nothing to really hurt him. He started to panic. Then he felt something white-hot and firm close around his wrist, and with a subtle _whoosh_ feeling he tumbled back into the control room.

Jansen was hanging onto his arm, his brows knit in concern, eyes assessing behind the frames of his glasses. "Sorry," he said. "I should've warned you about that."

"What just happened?" Megamind demanded, patting himself, unconsciously checking for holes in the places where he'd seen things sticking through his chest. Jansen sighed, releasing his hold on him and flapping one arm in an apologetic fashion.

"It's… tricky," he vaguely asserted.

Megamind gave him a look. "_Tricky_?"

"Sorry," he apologized again. "When you aren't used to being incorporeal, sometimes you create mental blocks for yourself without meaning to. You aren't really used to moving through solid objects yet. When you fell into the wall, you probably decided that you were trapped, and that wouldn't let you move back out again." He tapped one booted toe against the smooth floor beneath them. "Sometimes those blocks are handy, though. The same thing's keeping you from sinking through the floor right now."

Reflexively, Megamind looked down. It occurred to him that that was a good point. If he wasn't impeded by the walls then there really wasn't anything to keep him from moving up or down as well as side to side, and… oh crap, now he was sinking. He jerked his arms up in surprise, and Jansen took hold of him again, pulling him back up until he was floating just a couple of inches overtop.

"Ever flown?" the scientist asked him.

"Ha! _Ever flown_. That's a good one. Who _doesn't_ fly?" he demanded.

Jansen rolled his eyes, but one corner of his mouth twitched up in amusement. "Stick to that, then," he suggested. "At least until you've got the hang of things."

Tentatively, he let go of Megamind's arm again. When a few seconds passed and he didn't start sinking again, Jansen's smile turned full-blown, and he gave him an encouraging thumb's up. Over by the desk, Lady Mythman abruptly straightened in her seat. Her expression had turned thunderous. For a second he almost panicked, but then he realized that she wasn't looking at either of them. She was listening intently to her headset. "I believe," she said carefully, "that if thou couldst _recall_ thy evening, o knife-armed drunkard, then thou wouldst find 'twas thine _own_ mother that was thusly despoiled!" Then she smashed one of her gloved hands against a button on the control panel. Megamind jumped. Jansen flinched.

"…Whoa…" Megmind smirked. "Well, well. What's this? Dissent between the ranks?" That was always a good sign. He couldn't even count the number of times he'd escaped from prison just by getting the guards at each other's throats.

Jansen rolled his eyes. "That would be an understatement," he replied. "Back before he, um, faked his death, Metroman used to keep order. He had the last say on any disagreements. Without him, things are sketchier." As he listened to the scientist talk, Megamind took in the screens around them. There were a lot of cells, but most of them looked to be empty. Only a small handful were marked as occupied. "Commander Courage and Lady Mythman are both considered too out of touch to be practical leaders. Mermanus has the same problem. Under the ocean there's no one more powerful, but on land or in space, he's kind of underwhelming. Naturally, that just left Slasher to take charge – but no one wanted to hand command to him without a fight. He's not… very… _socially_ _pleasant_," Jansen diplomatically explained.

"From what I've seen, they're nothing but a pack of jerks and weirdoes," Megamind asserted, still looking at the cameras. His eyes drifted over the few occupied cells, their purple-suited occupants all looking pale and thin and miserable. In the background, Lady Mythman started talking in low tones to someone called 'Dr. Stevens' about how her authority was being undermined again.

Jansen let out a startled laugh. Then he raised a hand to cover his mouth, shaking his head a bit. "Being a hero will do that to you," he asserted. "It's a thankless job."

Glancing in his direction, Megamind arched an eyebrow at him, then turned back to the screens. There was one section that had caught his attention. Several cameras seemed to be situated around it, but rather than being transparent, all they seemed to show was a dull, pulsing red light. "Thankless? You should try being a supervillain. Ever since I became a hero all people seem to _do_ is thank me. They built me a freaking statue! Well, I mean, the brain bots helped, but that was more for practicality's sake. The Mayor offered to do it without them." Why was there so much surveillance fixed on a big red blur?

"Just wait," Jansen advised. "You'll see."

Opting to let the matter drop, Megamind gestured instead to the screens he'd been scrutinizing. "What's that?" he asked. "Some kind of power source?" That was his best guess.

Straightening his glasses, Jansen followed the line of his arm. Then his expression promptly fell. He looked down for a moment, and when he looked back up again his eyes studiously avoided staring at anything in particular. "Yes," he said. "Yes. That's the main power source. That's… yes." He raised a hand briefly and cleared his throat. For a moment he didn't say anything more. Megamind looked uncomfortably between him and the screens. It was obvious that he'd struck a nerve, but he wasn't sure what he'd done. After a few seconds Jansen spoke up again. "I spent a long time with that," he said. "It produces more than enough energy to keep the station running for decades. But that's not _all_ it does."

Curious, Megamind looked back at him. "Oh?" he asked.

Jansen nodded. "I'm sure you've noticed that things get a little _fuzzy_ for you up here," he said.

Abruptly, Megamind stiffened, and gave the other man his complete attention. "Are you talking about the fact that I can't think of _anything?_ Because I did kind of notice that, yeah. In a 'most unsettling thing ever' sort of way."

"That's the dampening field," Jansen replied with a wistful sigh, folding his arms. "My greatest invention. With it, endless power is possible – why it would keep all the light bulbs in the Western Hemisphere lit for two thousand years! But the energy isn't free. It has a cost, and I sometimes wonder if it isn't too high…"

"Yes, yes. Blah blah blah. Nothing is ever free," Megamind waved a hand dismissively, "_What's_ _it doing to my brain?"_

"It's affecting the range of your intelligence," Jansen said. "Think of it like sound – a dog can hear things that are completely out of range for a human. You think in a wavelength that is separate to that of the average being, I suspect that it's due to your alien physiology, but that's irrelevant right now. The field is restricting the scope of your thoughts. Containing your natural power. I'm sorry. I didn't know how it would affect someone like you. Strange, that the greatest invention of Jon Jansen – the brilliant Techmaster – would be so… vampiric." He laughed. It was a hollow, tired sound.

"But it's not permanent?" Megamind insisted. "If I left then the effects would wear off?"

"Certainly." Jansen sighed, then turned and headed back through the transparent door. After a beat of hesitation, Megamind followed. But it was still much easier to move through something when he could see through it. "Therein lies the difficult part, however. My invention is what powers the prison – as long as it's functioning, escape will be nearly impossible for you. If you could leave, then perhaps you'd be able to devise a means of circumventing it. But you need to circumvent it in order to leave…"

"…and as long as I'm here, I won't be able to think my way out. Right, right, right. Turning off the power source while I'm _on_ the station is probably a bad idea, too," he decided. "I mean I assume it's the reason why I'm not floating around and suffocating, isn't it?"

Jansen waved dismissively. "Actually, that's not too much of a problem. I designed a back-up generator in case the main power source ever failed. Which it will."

"It will?" Megamind asked, pausing in mid-hover.

The heroic techno-whiz stopped walking as well. He sucked in a deep breath. Then his shoulders slumped, and he shook his head a little, closing his eyes. "Oh yes," he said quietly. "When I first constructed this place, I warned the others that there was a flaw in my design. They all assumed I was being over-cautious. They didn't listen, and once the work was finished, they put it from their minds and all but forgot about me. They didn't want to hear that the system I devised was imperfect, and costly." He clenched one hand into a fist, and when he opened his eyes again, they were hard and sharp with conviction. "But that's alright," he said.

Megamind blinked at him uncertainly. "It is?" He asked, because Jansen seemed kind of on the upset side for 'alright'.

He nodded. "Yes, it's fine," he insisted. "I never thought I'd get an opportunity to rectify my mistake. But now that someone like you has come along, I've got a reason to think differently. If… if you're willing, then I think that the two of us can kill two birds with one stone. We're going to fix my biggest regret. We're going to destroy my greatest invention." He looked up a little, gaze searching, as though he was looking through and into all of the walls around them. Megamind figured that if they'd had a good sound system at their disposal, right about then was when the stirring Anthem of Determination would strike up. Something nice and orchestral.

Unfortunately, they didn't have a sound system.

"Yeah. Okay," he agreed.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Ok, some quick info - Jansen and Commander Courage's names were both straight-up lifted from two of my favorite heroic parodies. It seems like it's probably going to take me about a week to get each chapter out, maybe a little more or less, and I'm not completely sure how long this story's going to be (though I do have a plot outline for it). Special thanks to everyone who R&R'd, you guys rock! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Up next: more of what Roxanne's got shoved into her sleeves.


	3. Disguises

She was cold. But that was alright. Roxanne was pretty used to being stuck in high, cold places, and at least her perch on the balcony beside the Megamind statue gave her a beautiful view of the city. She leaned against the Plexiglas railing in front of her. The wind plucked at the blue silk of her sleeves and ruffled the corners of her borrowed cape. It was probably just her imagination, but it felt like all of Metro City was just sort of holding its breath, watching her out of the corner of its eye. Waiting. Reaching up with one hand, she adjusted the light goggles she'd put on for the evening. The night-vision settings made the museum's lingering lights glow like suns around her. It was kind of spectacular.

Idly, she laced her fingers together, and let out a breath. As she was about to turn and walk away – the third day in a row since Dinomight's 'death' that nothing had come of it – she heard a soft _tap, tap_ on the balcony behind her. The scent of smoke hit her nose. Her nerves jumped.

When she turned, Slasher was, of course, standing there. He was leaning against the opposite side of the balcony, a lit cigarette drooping idly from his mouth, arms folded and one leg crossed slightly in front of the other. Rather than looking at her, he was staring off at the night sky overhead. The tip of his smoke glowed vibrantly against her night-vision. So, Roxanne reached up and switched it off, lifting the goggles from her eyes and letting them rest on her forehead. She pursed her lips.

Slasher took a long drag from his cigarette. "Roxanne Ritchi. Former reporter for Metro City News. Former affiliate of the late Metroman. Current affiliate of the career criminal Megamind. Wanted fugitive." He breathed in more smoke, the embers flaring and paper burning until it was spent almost all the way down to the filter. Then he dropped it, crushing the stub under one booted heel.

Roxanne stared at the ashy mess it left on the walkway. It made her inexplicably irritated.

"Here to take me in?" she asked.

Slasher's eyes narrowed. "You're not a killer, Ritchi. What's your game?" he asked instead.

It was, she supposed, the moment of truth. Funny – she'd felt more nervous when she'd attempted her bank robbery than she did right then, standing across from a superhero, playing the role of the villain as well as she could. Her heart was beating fast, and for a few seconds the adrenaline made everything around her seem sharper. The scent in the air. The cold. The angles of her opponent's figure where he leaned, the sense of the Plexiglas barrier just a few inches away, the _whoosh_ of wind through the nooks and crannies of the museum building. Her lips curved into a smirk that had been carefully cultivated in front of the mirror every morning. The most sinister expression she could manage – she was actually just a little bit proud of it. "I don't play games." Her mouth was dry. She shrugged, and the cape helped make the gesture look very fluid. "You took one of mine – so I took one of yours."

Her opponent gave her a long, disconcerting look. "Where's Dinomight?" he asked.

Licking her lips a little bit, Roxanne extended one hand, and traced the outline of an explosion in the air. Then she mouthed the word 'boom', letting her mouth curve into a smirk again when she was finished. Her heart hammered against her ribcage. It made her pulse feel like a drumbeat against her temples. Mockingly, she raised her eyebrows. "I would've expected you to notice. It _was_ all over the news."

The tension in the air snapped like a taught string, and before she could blink something sharp and metallic was curving through the air beside her neck, cutting through the collar of her borrowed cloak and nicking the skin just below her jaw. She had time to see her own wide eyes reflected back at her against the hard surface of Slasher's sword-arm. Huge and blue. Then his un-bladed hand closed tightly around her throat. Not hard enough to make her choke, but it was a near thing. He was glowering at her, his eyes fixed on her face, and so she knew for certain that he didn't notice the little bit of light scanning him from the watch on her wrist.

"Lady, for your sake I hope to hell you're lying," he growled.

_Ow_, Roxanne thought triumphantly, before he dragged her away.

* * *

_BrainBot 133, Mark IV Sinister Model, Designation: House Bot No.3_, or Biter for short, had a job to do. Amendment – Biter had the _most important_ job to do, out of all three of the House Bots, because he was the only one who had been able to figure out what _RoxanneRitchi, Friendly Designation: Hostage, Creator Amendment: Daddy's Special Friend, Amendment: Mommy_ had been driving at when she'd spent all of those evenings talking to the three of them. Biter was of the firm opinion that this was because he was the smartest, and the handsomest, and the best at figuring out the many layers of _File: HumanPsychology_. Also, Mommy liked him more than the others. _BrainBot 132, Mark IV Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.2,_ or Spiky for short, contested his conclusions. Spiky's processes had determined that they were to maintain the living environs until Daddy returned from prison. Standard protocol. In his opinion, doing things for Mommy were only necessary as part of _Routine_ _4.789, LookAfterRoxanne_. Biter thought that Spiky was overly prone to overlooking _Routine 36.111, ListenToRoxanne_, which inevitably led to a disagreement between all of them, because then _BrainBot 131, Mark III Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.1,_ or Clawjaw, would bring up _Group Memory File: Purse Incident_. Not Biter's finest hour.

Then it would all just devolve into angry blaring and whirring and nothing would get done. But Biter knew that his own processes were superior, so he decided to forgo the arguing stage in favor of enacting _Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak_ (he had quite proudly drafted the whole program for himself) without even bringing it up. The sequence kicked into gear when the clock passed one a.m. and Mommy didn't return to _Residence_. Clawjaw was restoring battery power behind the television and Spiky was circling the door in an anxious fashion, beeping and clicking, transmitting a general inquiry as to whether or not he should enact _Routine 4.789, Addendum: UnableToReachDaddy, Emergency Protocol: CallPolice_. His hesitation was understandable. All of them privately thought that Daddy had made some sort of error when he programmed them to call the **police** if something was going **wrong**.

Initializing _Disguise Sequence Theta,_ Biter drifted into _Interior Closet No.2 _and retrieved a long, tan-colored trench coat and a brown fedora from one of the flat boxes on the top shelf. Securing the hat over his brain dome, he suspended the coat via two of his claw arms and inserted the buttons through their cloth button-openings. _Disguise Sequence Theta_ complete, Biter then went over to _Residence Window No.6 _and carefully unscrewed the latch. The pin fell with a soft 'plink' that went unremarked upon. Biter pushed back the glass, then zipped his way down to street level, and began hovering so that the bottom of the coat was no more than three centimeters above the ground.

Once he was some distance from _Residence_ (far enough that the other bots' proximity detectors wouldn't be able to pick up what he was doing, and subsequently object), he booted up the sequence for _Routine 4.789.2, RoxanneTracker_. It took a while for him to get a signal. Once he finally did, it was much farther away than he'd expected. Initiating _Basic Protocol 6: PlayItCool,_ Biter extended one of the coat's sleeves outward and attempted _Subterfuge Routine 17.99.3, AcquireHumanTransportation._ He had devised that particular routine himself after consuming a great deal of television media, and was confident that he'd be able to pull it off. He hovered carefully down the street, heading for slightly busier roads until, eventually, a somewhat tired-looking cab pulled up beside him.

"Where to, bud..dy…" the driver began, speaking out of his rolled-down window before trailing off. His eyes widened slightly.

Biter bleeped at him.

After a second, the driver rolled up his window, shook his head, and took off down the road again without permitting him access to the vehicle. Pausing, Biter ran a few assessment programs, and determined that his inability to imitate human vocalizations was going to be a hindrance. Using one of his claws to straighten his fedora (if it fell off, his disguise would be ruined) he proceeded to _Subterfuge Routine 17.89.4, ._ The majority of vehicles along the roadside were unoccupied. Biter located one which was a suitable shade of dark blue. Then he used his laser cutter to remove the obstacle presented by the driver's side window, disengaged the locking mechanisms and alarm system, and arranged himself onto the seat behind the wheel. It was fairly simple to use one of his claws to force the ignition. After a brief delay, the engine rumbled to life.

Perfect.

Letting out a self-satisfied buzz, Biter waited for forward motion to commence.

And waited.

And waited.

After five minutes had passed without result, he re-examined the vehicle. There must have been a step he'd missed. For a moment he debated initiating _Routine 177, TrialAndError_, but given his previous experiences with that routine, he decided instead to go with _Routine 516.1, GoogleIt_. Piggy-backing onto the nearest wireless network, he searched for information on the standard operation of vehicles. There was a lot of it. It took him another several minutes to find out what he needed to know, but when he did he was satisfied that he'd made the right choice.

Opening the car door again, Biter zipped out, and carried on down the street until he located a fairly sizable stray brick. Then he went back to the car, re-engaged the engine, and used one of his claws to pointedly drop the brick onto the gas pedal.

Two minutes later, he concluded that he would have to re-assess and improve upon _Subterfuge Routine 17.99.2,_ and very quickly abandoned the scene of the smoking three-car wreck. A few alarms blared and several humans rushed out of nearby buildings (though none had been involved in the crash itself – the other two cars had been stationary and unoccupied). Giving up on _Basic Protocol 6_ for the moment, Biter jacked up the energy level of his hover system and zoomed away from the crime scene. Flying probably compromised his disguise, but he concluded that he would have to go by air for the time being, at least until he was somewhat closer to the source of Mommy's tracking signal. Buildings whipped by, a myriad of bright lights, his eye glancing over the few lit windows he passed. The city seemed oddly empty. As far back as Biter's memory files went, there had always been other brain bots around the city. Even when Daddy was in prison and they were on stand-by, there were bots who maintained some of their city-wide systems, and bots who spied on certain areas, bots who checked the weather and traffic conditions, and bots who kept an eye on Metroman (or, recently, initiated _City Security Routine 1.1_). Ever since Daddy's most recent arrest, however, it had only been Biter, Spiky, and Clawjaw who were around.

That was how Biter knew that his mission was so important, though. If everything had just been part of standard procedure then there would have been other bots within communication distance. There would have been _Minion, Friendly Designation: Daddy v.2_ to consult with_,_ and Daddy would have been sent to the _Metro City Prison _coordinates, and not _Space Jail: Location Unknown_.

A light rain kicked up as he made his way, following the signal. It spread wide, dark dots over the fabric of his coat, and forced him to reduce speed by a marginal factor. He kept going until he cleared the highest stretch of downtown buildings, making sure his hat and coat didn't slip too far, and hesitated only when he had passed the outward boundaries of _Navigation File: MetroCityMap_. As a matter of fact, he was so intent upon his task that he didn't even realize he'd left the city until one of his internal warning sensors went off. When it did, he stopped cold. He was still hovering several stories up. The bright dots of headlights were refracted in the rain as cars moved to and fro on the highway below him. Biter had never left the city before. He didn't think any of the brain bots ever had. _Routine 2.339, Emergency Protocol: ReturnToLair_ threatened to kick in, his basic programming urging him to go back and abandon his task.

Determinedly, Biter cancelled that routine, and initiated with _Routine 516.1, GoogleIt_ again instead. In a matter of minutes he had saved several new map files, and managed to triangulate his current location with acceptable precision. He would simply have to proceed with extra caution and care for his subterfuge routines, he determined, but still opted for speed over more convincing duplicity as he took off again. His internal sensors whirred and jangled frenetically for a moment as he left the range of the city network. There was no turning back. He had made his decision as soon as he had scripted _Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak_ for himself. Even if it technically required that he become a renegade bot.

He would just have to make a new file for himself under _Classification: Badass._

The streets outside of the city didn't look substantially different than the roads _inside_ of the city, but there was a stark disparity in that he felt profoundly alone. Biter proceeded by air until his first battery warning went off. He ran a quick calculation, realized that it would likely be another hour, at least, before he could convert some solar energy for himself, and went into _PowerSaverMode_. Dropping in altitude, he reduced the output to his hover engine until he was at street-level, and dimmed his external lights. With another check of his hat, he proceeded down the roadside at _Speed: BriskWalkingPace_. There weren't many pedestrians around, and those that he did see were a fair distance away. By the time a few streaks of early sunlight had started to break through the horizon, dulled by the cloud cover, his second battery warning had gone off. He started to recharge, little by little, but he was still using more energy than he could convert, and when dawn fully broke he was on his last battery warning.

At right around the same time, the signal he was getting from _RoxanneTracker_ abruptly died. Biter halted his forward motion, trying to assess whether the disruption was caused by interference or his own depleted power cells. A quick check of his surroundings revealed no good place for cover. He determined that he would have to raise his battery levels before he could properly re-examine the situation, and so waited, dropping his power usage even further and subtly shifting the collar of his coat so that more sunlight fell down the front. A passing car slowed its pace, drawing level with him before immediately speeding up again. Biter observed its progress with minimal optical settings. In hindsight, perhaps he should have recharged before he set off to provide Mommy with back-up support. He made an amendment to _Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7.1_, and waited. The meter for his battery slowly, slowly began to tick upwards again. It would have gone faster if the weather had been clear.

The signal didn't come back, though. That meant that there was probably some sort of interference. Or the transmitter had been destroyed, which wouldn't be good, because if the transmitter was destroyed then he was supposed to start _Routine 36.109, EmergencyContact_, and alert Daddy as well as every police station, hospital, and fire station in the city – but Biter couldn't do that when he wasn't **in** the city, could he? So it was probably simpler to assume it was interference of some kind. When there was enough sunlight filtering down through the rain clouds that he could move without expending more power than he converted, Biter resumed his trek, heading for the signal's last recorded origin. It took him a considerable amount of time. The road he was on branched out into further roads, winding its way through blocks of buildings and stretches of short green grass. After a few hours the rain began to diminish, until only a few lingering drops ran down from gutters and splashed into puddles against the concrete. A jogger passed him. Biter kept his collar up and nodded to him, and the man wound up staring at him for so long that he miscalculated his trajectory and collided with a street sign. He was cursing as Biter marginally increased his speed in an effort to avoid further contact. But after that, it was clear that the majority of the non-Metro City human populace was rousing. People came and went from buildings. Dogs barked. More vehicles poured into the streets, and Biter found himself watching it all carefully, intrigued by the activities that weren't too unlike the ones in Metro City, and yet very alien, as well.

The group database for Metro City was very large. Biter could look up the names and residences of nearly anyone who lived there if he wanted to. But beyond the city, everything was disconnected – and more uncoordinated, he concluded, as the third pedestrian in an hour tripped while walking past him.

"Oh my god!" the woman exclaimed, extending a shaking hand in his direction. Biter immediately tried to initialize _Basic Protocol 6.1, NothingToSeeHere_, emitting a cheerful whistling sound and tipping his hat slightly, but it didn't have the desired effect. The woman started screaming. _Pointing_ and screaming. Calculating the angle of her finger, Biter was forced to conclude that she was pointing at him, and not some potentially undisguised figure behind him. _Routine 10.22, TacticalRetreat_ kicked in, because he didn't have any back-up and there was no one to find and repair him if he was blown to pieces right then, and he utterly abandoned his subterfuge routine in favor of speeding off through the gap between two nearby buildings.

In his haste he improperly calculated his angle, and his fedora was knocked back and off of the dome of his skull. Letting out a startled bleep, Biter reached back to try and grasp at it with one of his clawed hands, but the wind caught it and carried it out of his reach. Behind him, the sounds of human distress were increasing. He couldn't risk turning back. So instead he increased his speed and tried to find cover, darting between the small, square buildings around him. It wasn't easy going. There was a lot of space that was simply comprised of grass or road, and nothing seemed to be very tall. He navigated as quickly as he could, and after a brief assessment of his status, shifted the trench coat so that it was covering the top of his head. All the while he attempted to re-connect with the signal from _RoxanneTracker_ and keep along his course. After an uncalculated length of time he found himself amidst several taller, shabbier buildings, with a few colorful signs out front and more crowds of people making their way along the streets. If he'd still had a complete disguise he could have tried to blend in. As it stood he was still retreating, the strange environment setting off alarms that told him everything was wrong, wrong, all wrong, and he wasn't programmed for this sort of thing, until eventually he picked up a small _blip_ on his proximity detector.

Biter wasn't sure what it was, but it was familiar, and right then that was all that really mattered to him. He adjusted his course and tried to follow it.

* * *

As far as intimidating rooms went, Roxanne would give the one she was in a three out of ten. It looked like the standard interrogation cell from a bad cop drama, with thick, grey walls, a single light bulb swinging from a chain, a table, and a chair that she'd been sat down on. But there were a couple of things to undermine the starkness. Namely, a few wine crates pushed up against the far corner, and the distant murmur of voices filtering in through the crack around the door. If she had to guess, she'd say that she was in the back room of some place – a bar, maybe, or a liquor store. The knots around her wrists were just tight enough to be uncomfortable, but they were the only part of her that'd been tied, and even then they'd been tied in _front_ of her. Apparently she wasn't considered too much of a threat, though the anti-kidnapping gun, the goggles, the cape, and the watch had all been removed. Her mouth was filled with the fuzzy taste of knock-out gas. It was a little sweet, and reminded her of the early formula that Megamind had used.

He'd revised it after the first year of kidnapping her, though, because she'd built up a tolerance, and started waking up earlier than he'd planned for. Apparently, Slasher hadn't gotten that memo. She supposed that was why she was alone in the room. Either that or he was trying to build up tension, leave her wondering what he planned on doing with her. Roxanne leaned forward a little, twisting her wrists to test the ropes. In all honesty she hadn't been quite sure what would happen to her when the Collective got wind of her actions. Slasher turning up by himself was just one of the possibilities. It was hard to say if it was an advantage or a disappointment that she hadn't been taken straight to the prison, but either way, she was going to try and work with it. Flexibility was the key to any good plan, and superheroes were, ultimately, just as set in their ways as supervillains.

She hoped that at least one of the brain bots came through, but she couldn't rely on that. Leaning back again, Roxanne mused that it would be easy to get out of the chair, at least. All she'd have to do would be stand up.

The door opened. Light streamed in from the rooms beyond it briefly as Slasher came inside. He caught sight of her, and his eyes widened a bit, the cigarette drooping before he caught himself and closed the door again behind him. Roxanne raised her eyebrows and gave him a pointedly unimpressed once-over.

"Wow," she deadpanned. "You really pulled out all the stops for this one, huh? Got the little chained light bulb and everything." She nodded up to the fixture in question.

Slasher gave her a sour look as he stalked across the room, big and foreboding, the dull greys of his outfit blending rather neatly with the dim light. It was actually pretty intimidating. Roxanne's nerves jangled a bit, and she forced them down, reminding herself that she knew what she was doing. Sort of. She rallied herself internally, and without really thinking about it found herself slipping neatly into the role of the villainess – Slasher was a career hero. He knew his part of the game, no matter his appearances. That thought didn't stop her from jumping a little as he slammed his hands down onto the table across from her, though.

"We're in my town now, Ritchi," he growled. "Where's Dinomight?"

_You're the supervillain, _she reminded herself again. _Presentation_. Slowly, she curved her lips into a mocking smile, and put on her best 'you'll have to do better than that' expression. "Oh, so we're in Port City? Thanks for the tip," she replied. "What is this anyway, the back room of some kind of bar? Did you have to clear out a bunch of boxes to make space for me in here? That must have taken you a while. Next time try renting a storage locker. They're creepier _and_ they have better sound-proofing."

Slasher struck the table again and leaned in closer to her, the burning end of his cigarette coming within inches of her nose. She wrinkled it distastefully and leaned back a little. "Where. Is. Dinomight?" he asked again. The flat of his hand, splayed out on the table between them, grew sharp and metallic.

"I already told you," Roxanne loftily replied. "He's with Metroman now." She laughed. It was a nervous reaction, but she managed to twist it into something of a maniacal chuckle with surprisingly little effort.

With a disgruntled glare, Slasher leaned back again, and started circling the room around her. "Cut the crap, Ritchi," he advised. "I'm going to ask you this one more time, and then I'm going to stop playing nice. What did you do with Dinomight?"

"I think you might need to see someone about your memory problems, Slasher. I've already answered that question a few times now," she replied, following his progress until he moved behind her, and out of her range of vision. She shifted slightly in her seat. "How many ways do you want me to say it? He expired, he got crispy-fried, barbequed, terminated, finished, blown to kingdom come, blasted, decimated, destroyed, sent to the big dinosaur farm in the sky. I _killed _him. To _death_."

_Blam_. All at once something that sounded like a gunshot went off. The light bulb overheard exploded in a flurry of broken glass and sparks. There was an incoherent cry of rage, and then Roxanne was ripped from the chair and slammed against the nearest wall with enough force to knock the breath out of her. Pain blossomed across the back of her shoulders. Real, visceral, reactionary fear hit her in a sudden flood of emotion, and she reflexively kicked out. Her leg landed against unyielding muscle. A fist landed against the wall next to her head with enough force to crack it. She choked back a scream, reminded suddenly, terrifyingly of when Hal had dropped her into traffic and then caught her again, his hands as hard as iron where they grabbed her.

"How long have you and Megamind really been in league with each other?" Slasher suddenly demanded. His voice boomed in her ears, and spittle flew from the corner of his mouth.

Roxanne couldn't manage to reply. She was sure that if she opened her mouth, the only thing that would come out would be an inarticulate squeak.

"What are you doing? What have you been planning? Was this your idea from the beginning – are you setting the Collective up for something? Trying to take down all of our members?" the hero continued, sounding increasingly unhinged. "I should have seen it. No one successfully kidnaps the same woman over and over again like that. Any sane person would have left the city, moved on, gotten out of that mess. You two have been in on it from the start, haven't you? Probably set this whole thing up!" He hit the wall again. She flinched. "What are you planning? _What are you planning?"_

He dropped his voice again on the last sentence. The effect was probably anger-inspired, or maybe it was meant to be really intimidating, but the end result just left him sounding kind of constipated. Roxanne swallowed, fixing on the unintentional humor there. Reminding herself that he didn't kill people – he intimidated them, took them down, and she knew that. He was playing his end of the game with her. Only, his game was considerably rougher than the ones she was used to.

"I think you need to eat more fiber," she managed to say, her voice wavering only a little towards the end. Up close she could smell nothing but tobacco, and could see the white of her assailant's eyes, the wrinkles in his mask. He hands were still tied, and she would stand a snowball's chance in hell of taking him in a fight even if they weren't. But that didn't matter. Slasher was used to dealing with psychopaths and maniacs, the kind of complex villains who piled plans upon plans upon plans, each more convoluted than the next. His archnemesis made Megamind look straight-forward by comparison. Dealing with that sort of thing had made him paranoid – as he himself had just demonstrated. A person like that probably wouldn't believe the truth of her situation even if she flat out told it to him. In fact, flat-out telling him would probably make him even _less_ inclined to believe it. When she'd been laying her scheme out, she had worried that she was too transparent.

"You're out of your mind, Ritchi," he said, pulling back a little.

"_I'm_ out of my mind?" she couldn't resist tossing back.

With a slight jerk of his wrist, Slasher let her go, and left her to slump against the wall. Her heart was pounding so hard in her ribcage that she wasn't sure how she'd missed it before. "Tell me what you're up to, and maybe I'll see to it that you get a nice cell right next to your boyfriend's," he offered.

"That'll be hard," she replied. "Considering that he'll have broken free of your little prison about, oh… two hours ago?"

Slasher's eyes widened. Roxanne smirked. Then, for added effect, she tossed her head back and indulged in a full-blooded evil laugh. It was kind of interesting how a good 'mwahahaha' could ease some of the tension. She wondered if that was why it was such a popular pastime for supervillains. She was still going at it when Slasher wrenched the door to the room open and dashed out, slamming it closed behind himself again. Of course, she was just lying, but usually supervillains liked to employ a little kernel of truth into any lie they told. Roxanne didn't share that kind of compulsion. She just wanted to get her jailer out of the room in a hurry.

Unfortunately, he didn't forget to lock the door behind him when he left. That would have made things much simpler. As his footsteps thundered away until she couldn't hear them anymore, Roxanne moved over to the doorframe. She tried the handle, just for good measure, but it wouldn't twist. Stepping back for a second, she took a good look at the hinges instead. There were three of them – all basic, steel interior ones, not really that different from what she had back home. They were sort of like the kind that had been used in the basement of the old theatre, though those had been brass instead. She remembered that incident. It had been one of the few times when Megamind and Minion had left her untended in a room after kidnapping her.

With a slight grin, Roxanne leaned down and, after a little fumbling, got one of her leather boots off. Keeping to the ground, she settled beside the lowest hinge on the door, and used the heel of the boot to start hammering at the bottom of the hinge's pin. The trick would be to get it up high enough for her to yank it out. They weren't really designed to come loose, after all, but she'd found that as long as she had something suitable to stand in for a hammer, she could get the job done. It took a few blows before the pin popped up high enough that she could try pulling it with her fingers. The effort left her with limited success and a bruised thumb. Scowling, Roxanne gave the room another look over, and then glanced down at the ropes around her wrists. They were strong when she tested them, but not really thick. That probably suited Slasher's style – he seemed to like sleek things. Experimentally, she wrapped the edge of the roped underneath the tip of the pin. It squeezed in.

Shifting to her knees, Roxanne braced herself, and then yanked her wrists sharply upwards. There was a soft _ping_ of metal hitting metal, and then the pin came loose, clattering to the floor with enough noise to make her wince.

She held her breath. A few seconds ticked by, however, and there was no shouting, no sounds of footsteps, or sign that she'd been caught out. Shoving the pin into her pocket, she picked up her boot again and went to work on the middle hinge.

The second one came more easily than the first, but the third proved itself much more stubborn – she had to drag the chair over to stand on in order to get enough leverage, and whoever owned the building she was in obviously didn't believe in WD40, because the metal was stuck pretty fast. It took her more time to get the last one done than it did the other two combined, and she'd almost given up on it when the pin finally gave, and she overbalanced and almost toppled off of the chair. The door shuddered. Righting herself, Roxanne shoved the last pin into her pocket and yanked her boot back on. She moved the chair to one side, and then, carefully, pushed forwards.

Without the pins to hold the hinges together, they split apart like puzzle pieces, and the left side of the door gave way. The other half still offered some resistance, locked as it was, but when she put her shoulder into it she managed to get one end of it clear of the doorframe, and then it was a simple matter to push sideways – completely nullifying the way the lock had secured itself – and catch the door before it fell into the wall directly on the other side of it. Yellow light filled up the short hallway she found herself in. Carefully, Roxanne leaned the door against its frame, and assessed her location. Going off of the strong smell of seafood and the distant sounds of conversation from the open end of the hall, it seemed she'd hit close to the mark with her guesswork and she was in a small restaurant of some kind. There were boxes stacked up around her, and what looked like a staff bathroom just a few steps away. The closed end of the hall hosted an emergency exit.

She was tempted to just go through that door and make a break for it. But if she'd wanted to avoid getting caught completely, then it would have been easier to try that in Metro City, where she had a hover bike and brain bots and a few good hiding spots to fall back on. No – she needed to get her stuff. Slasher had taken it, so all she needed to do was figure out where he'd keep it.

'In the bathroom' was probably a long shot, but after some thought, she crept over to it and through that door anyway. Flicking on the light switch revealed a small, closet-sized room with a toiled, a sink, and a cracked, unframed mirror hanging in front of some tacky wallpaper. Roxanne examined her reflection. She looked pale and a little haggard. Her hair was a mess, and there were a few purpling bruises around the base of her neck. A few more would probably show up on her shoulders. Ouch. Not daring to run the water, in case the sound of the pipes drew attention, she ran a hand through her hair and did her best to straighten up a little. Without the cape she looked less like a would-be supervillainess and more like someone on their way home from a rock concert.

The sound of footsteps startled her a little. Reaching over, she hit the light, and flattened herself against the wall by the door. The bright glow of the hallway streamed in from around the frame. It flickered briefly as someone walked past.

There was the distinctive sound of cursing. She heard a loud clatter, and then what sounded like someone rushing over to the end of the hall and throwing open the emergency exit. After a few seconds the footsteps came back again. Slasher's distinctive voice bellowed for someone. Roxanne held her breath as she listened to the conversation through the thin bathroom walls. It occurred to her that she might have done better to try and put the door back to the way it was. Then maybe her absence would have gone unnoticed for a little longer.

"She can't have gone far, can she? I mean she didn't look like very much when you brought her in, Slash," an unfamiliar male voice.

"You should know better than to underestimate one of _them_," Slasher's voice said back, low and furious. "The worst ones never look it."

Roxanne barely had time to react, then, as the door to the bathroom was flung sharply open. All she could do was suck in a breath and try to merge with the wall behind her. The peeling paint stopped just short of her nose. For a few seconds, it seemed like time had stopped.

"Damn," Slasher swore. Some of the pressure on the door eased up a little bit.

"Want me to put the word out? Get the eyes on the street looking for her?" the other man asked.

"Do it," Slasher moodily replied. There was the sound of a lighter clicking. "I'm going hunting."

"Man, I wish you wouldn't smoke those death sticks-"

"We all wish for a lot of things, Patches. Doesn't amount to much in a world like this one."

"I don't believe that."

"I know you don't. That's why you'll always be a better man than I am."

Internally rolling her eyes, Roxanne tuned out the rest of their conversation, until the heavy sound of footsteps told her that both men had moved on. Banter. It came in many flavors, and most of them were patently ridiculous. For a few minutes she stayed where she was, afraid that it was actually some kind of trap, and that the first second she moved she would be caught. Some of the lights beyond the bathroom dimmed a bit. When her bruised shoulders started to really protest being squished against a dingy bathroom wall, Roxanne finally got up the nerve to move again, peering cautiously around the door and inching back into the hall again. For the second time, she felt the urge to just make a break for the exit. For the second time, she pushed it back, and instead gathered up the tattered edges of her courage and slunk over towards the open end of the hallway.

To the right of the hall were a pair of silvery doors that led into what was probably kitchen. In front was an open dining room, lined with worn booths, and little scrubbed wooden tables. The place looked like it had something of a pirate theme going on. There were tropical birds and ships painted onto the walls, and the lamps on the booths were shaped like little treasure chests. A short bar stretched from the wall opposite the kitchen doors. From her angle, Roxanne could see the back side of it, and couldn't help but grinning a little at her luck – peeking out from the top of a box shoved into the bottom tier was what looked like the shoulder of her borrowed cape. With another quick check of the room to make sure no one was hiding in any dark corners, she darted forward, crouching behind the bar and sliding the box forward. The cape _was_ in there. The gun and the goggles weren't, but the watch was, and so were a few other loose odds and ends that didn't matter nearly as much. Folding the bulk of the cloak's material up, Roxanne tucked it under one arm, and then strapped the watch onto her wrist. She felt hyper-aware of her surroundings, and the fact that she could get caught at any moment kept her ears sensitive to any and all sounds around her, and made her hair stand on end.

Turning the watch's face, she checked its most recent scan, and then watched as her body morphed and shifted until it was considerably larger and more spandex-clad. One of her hands was shaped like a metal blade. It would probably have to stay that way, unless she could get another scan of Slasher, which seemed like it was pushing things a little.

Satisfied, Roxanne peered up over the edge of the bar, wondering which exit it would be better to try and leave by – the front or the back. Or maybe it would be better to go back to the bathroom, and hide out until the restaurant opened again? Then she could change that watch's settings to something inconspicuous, like Bernard, and try to slip out with the breakfast crowd. Provided a dive like the one she was in even _had_ a breakfast crowd.

Before she could make a decision, the front entrance swung open again. A burly man with an eye-patch strode into the dining room, his strides heavy, the corner of his mouth downturned as he walked straight for her hiding place. Roxanne ducked down again, but before she could react he had already moved close enough to see her. The man paused and blinked at her. She froze, and her first thought was that she'd been caught red-handed, and had screwed up enough that she was about to be recaptured.

"I thought you said you were heading out?" he asked.

Oh. Right. She still looked like Slasher. Thinking fast, Roxanne glanced down at the box in front of her, and then slid it back into place.

"Just checking some things," she grumbled out, internally flinching at the dissonance of hearing such a rough voice come out of what was, technically, her mouth.

It must've been the right thing to say, though, because the man just sighed and shook his head a little. "You and your ideas," he said. "I told the fellas to be on the lookout for your escapee, anyway. Give 'em ten minutes and they'll probably have it all over the city."

She swallowed. "Good," she replied. "I'm going." With a nod she stood up, and after a second of thought, determined that Slasher was the kind of person who likely used the back door. She headed for the rear exit. The man with the eye-patch gave her sword hand a curious glance, but didn't say anything, and didn't try to stop her.

As the emergency exit closed heavily behind her, Roxanne let out a breath, switched the watch's setting to Bernard, and worked on putting a little bit of distance between herself and the seafood restaurant.

All things considered, she wasn't doing half bad.

* * *

Having endured a little more than a month's worth of jail time, in what was quite possibly the most boringly awful prison ever devised by man, had given Megamind a lot of perspective on certain things. For example, he'd learned that if he wedged himself into one of the room's corners and planted his feet on the opposite walls, he could climb up all the way to the ceiling. Of course, he'd been able to do something similar as a child, as well, but it had been a long time since he'd had cause to try it again. Of course, the broad, transparent doorway meant that the activity wasn't even useful as a hiding place, but given the way he was practically bouncing off of the walls for the need to expend some of his body's natural energy left him doing it anyway.

He'd also learned that being patient was much harder when one had a very limited number of distractions to call upon. It was all well and good to agree to help Jansen take down the prison's security systems, for example, but with his diminished brain capacity, wrapping his head around some of the more complex ideas was incredibly difficult. Not to mention incredibly _frustrating_, since he knew for a fact that if he was his normal self, he would have had no trouble at all.

"Oh. You're up there again," Jansen's voice drifted towards him. Megamind glanced down, and then dropped a little gracelessly to the floor, where the heroic apparition was blinking up at him. He straightened a few awkward wrinkles from his jumpsuit, and then moved to sit over on his cot.

"Please tell me it's been two weeks since the last time we talked," he requested. "I think I'm actually getting even _dumber_. I was trying to recall my childhood yesterday and I only got as far as my shool days before my memory quit on me." That had been incredibly disconcerting. For a few minutes he'd had to try and avoid hyperventilating at the thought that the prison's dampening field would slowly eat up more and more of his life history, until all he could remember were grey walls and bland meals.

Jansen gave him an appropriately apologetic and sympathetic look, straightening out his glasses a little bit. "I'm afraid it's only been two _days_," he replied. "There are another twelve to go before the station's maintenance routines kick in."

With a heartfelt sigh, Megamind slumped back, almost striking the wall beside his cot with one of his hands. He glared at the offensively spotless ceiling overhead. "Well that sucks."

With a noncommittal sound of agreement, Jansen strode over, and took him by the hand. There was the by-now sense of burning and separation. When it cleared, Megamind found himself hovering in the center of his cell, his unoccupied body lying still and glassy-eyed behind him. He wasted almost no time in heading through the transparent cell door, and Jansen obliged him by keeping pace, following him towards the station's control room.

Technically speaking, there wasn't much of a reason for them to go there. The plan that they'd more or less cobbled together wouldn't be put in action for, as Jansen had said, another twelve days – provided that the Collective actually kept to its supposed schedules. However, the control room was definitely the most interesting part of the station, and Megamind had convinced Jansen that he needed regular distractions if he was going to stay sane and competent for the duration of his imprisonment. To his credit, the bespectacled superhero hadn't taken a _lot_ of convincing, and was fairly decent about turning up now and again to drag him through the walls and passed the locked doors. A couple of times they'd been to visit the other inmates, but that was just… disturbing. There weren't many of them, and those that there were had obviously succumbed to mental illness. Whether they'd done so _before_ their imprisonment or _after_ remained up in the air.

"So how much of your life can you typically remember?" Jansen asked him idly as they made their way through the corridor.

Megamind blinked. "All of it, of course," he replied. "Why? How much of your life can _you_ remember?"

"Um. Considerably less than that," Jansen admitted. "When you say 'all of it'…"

"Yes?"

"You don't mean," he turned his wrist rather vaguely, "_all of it?_ Surely you can't remember what life was like when you were an infant."

Pausing, Megamind gave him a sidelong look of befuddlement. "Well, not my very first day, no," he replied. "Doesn't everyone's memory kick in when they're two days old?"

Jansen's eyes widened considerably. "Ah. No."

He took a moment to consider that, resuming their trek through the station as the other man carried on. "Your memory must be part of your advanced brain capacity, at least in part. That's fascinating. Most humans can only go as far back as their early childhood, and even then, memories tend to degrade with time."

Huh. That… actually, that explained quite a bit. He'd always wondered why Metroman seemed confused whenever he brought up their shared flight to Earth. A sudden jolt of alarm leapt through him, though, and he paused again, darting a quick look at Jansen. "How long does it normally take for humans to start forgetting things?" he asked. As soon as the question left his mouth, though, he realized that his fears were a little unreasonable – he knew it had to be longer than a few months, because it wasn't like he hadn't had extended interactions with people who weren't Minion, but still. He'd been worried about his own memory. It had never occurred to him to worry that, in his absence, _Roxanne_ might forget _him_. Not literally, anyway.

Jansen blinked. "It depends on the memory's information," he replied. "Little things, like dates and times and trivia, can disappear fairly quickly if the brain deems them irrelevant. More important matters can last a lifetime, provided that the person who remembers them doesn't suffer from any illnesses or traumas which affect their recollection. I'm afraid I can't be more specific than that. Neurology isn't one of my specialties."

Megamind made a noncommittal 'hmm', his brows furrowing. That sounded like an incredibly finicky system to base something as important as a life's history off of. He wondered, briefly, how much of the system relied on conscious effort – did humans decide what was important for them to recall, and what wasn't? Or was the whole thing involuntary? If it was involuntary, how did their brains determine relevant information from useless data? Megamind had forgotten things in his life, so he supposed he wasn't completely unfamiliar with the concept, but the stuff he 'forgot' was always still in his mind – it was just difficult to sift through all of his brain's catalogue of information in a short period of time. For example, he knew that he was supposed to pronounce it 'hello', but he tended not to remind himself of that in the split second it took to answer the phone.

His greeting sounded better anyway.

Absently, he tried to focus a little more on the probabilities involving biological data storage, but his brain quit out on him again. He sighed. After a few seconds, Jansen sighed, too.

"It really is a shame," the hero mused. "Under ordinary circumstances I think we could have the most fascinating conversations with one another."

Megamind nodded. "You would probably learn a lot," he agreed.

Jansen rolled his eyes. "I'm a super-genius myself, remember? I'm sure I know a thing or two that you don't."

"Oh, you're obviously very clever," he assured him. "When this is all done you'll have to tell me more about this dampening field and power system of yours so that I can properly appreciate it. It's just that I'm, well. I'm _me_."

"Hmph."

"I mean I'm _really smart_. Really. This isn't just for show," he insisted, pointing at the top of his head.

"Size isn't important. It's how you use it that matters," Jansen insisted, crossing his arms and turning his head, adopting an expression of quiet affront.

"Obviously," Megamind agreed. "But you use your brain the same way I do. For incredibly brilliant plans and astounding technological innovations that would boggle the minds of the world's so-called masters of science and academia! So between you and me, size matters, and mine's bigger so I win. So there."

"This is juvenile," Jansen argued. "Besides, I have psychic powers."

Glaring, Megamind mimicked his posture, sticking his nose into the air and letting out a huff of his own. "Psychic powers don't count."

"That seems a little arbitrary of you."

"Does not."

"Does too."

"Philistine."

"Braggart."

"Upstart!"

"Egotist!"

"Nerd!"

"Grandstander!"

As Megamind debated the relative merits of trying to start an incorporeal slap-fight, they passed through the entryway to the command center. He came up short. The room was very crowded. Mermanus had taken up position at the surveillance desk. He was paying more attention to the handheld game he had balanced absently on one knee, though – it looked like one of the cheap little dime-store trinkets that was made out of magnets and only had two buttons. Minion was slouching in one of the room's corners, floating listlessly in his suit, not seeming to really look at anything at all. Megamind stopped in front of him.

"You're sure you can't do anything about this?" he asked, not for the first time.

Jansen sighed. He walked over to Mermanus, leaning over his shoulder to look at his game, before glancing up at the surveillance screens. "I would if I could. At this point, having your friend on our side would be incredibly useful," he replied. "Unfortunately, whatever telepathy Mermanus uses is on a really weird 'frequency'."

Nodding, having expected that answer, Megamind nevertheless raised a hand and waved it back and forth in front of his friend's face. He really hated Mermanus. As soon as he was capable of hatching not-villainous, entirely merited plans for vengeance again, he was going to come up with something really nasty to do in retaliation. Like maybe turning his underwater kingdom into a block of ice. Or making an army of exploding robot seals. Or transporting him to a desert wasteland inside of an impenetrable bubble dome that contains one single bottle of water which is accessible only through an increasingly deadly and complex series of traps…

The communication systems on the desk lit up, and the headphones that Mermanus had set onto the console started jangling with noise. For a few moments there was absolutely no reaction from the aquatic member of the Collective. It could have been Megamind's imagination, but he thought he saw Minion's fins twitch a little. He looked closer, staring at his friend for a solid minute, but nothing else happened.

Another minute passed. He threw up his arms.

"Isn't he going to answer that?" he demanded. "You know, maybe some time this century?"

Jansen leaned closer to the headset, tilting one ear towards it. "Shh. I think I can make it out," he said. "It's a priority message from one of the other leaders on Earth."

"What's it say?" Megamind demanded, moving closer as well. He winced as Mermanus shifted a little bit and put a shoulder straight through him.

"I can't tell. It's just asking him to respond," Jansen replied.

As if he could hear the exasperation in his fellow hero's voice, Mermanus finally heaved a sigh, leaned forward, and stuck his hand right through Jansen's jaw in order to pick up the headset.

"Mermanus here. What is it?"

There was a muffled flurry of conversation from the other side. Megamind shared a glance with Jansen, and they both leaned forward to try and make it out a little better, but short of sticking their heads _inside of_ Mermanus' (which neither of them seemed inclined to try) they couldn't make out very much. After a few seconds, the hero straightened in his seat, looking towards the surveillance feed. His eyes narrowed a bit. Following the direction of his gaze, Megamind was a little surprised to see that he was looking at the surveillance screen for _his_ cell. Where _he_ was still lying glassy-eyed on his cot, not doing much of anything.

"Yes, I am looking at him right now. He isn't doing anything," Mermanus said. There was more muffled, urgent-sounding conversation from the other end. "What? No. Nothing has happened."

Megamind's eyebrows went up. After another minute, Mermanus muttered something unpleasant under his breath, and stood. "_Fine_," he ground out. "But this is a waste of time." Reaching up, he took of his headset and tossed it aside again, grumbling something about paranoia and idiots as he turned towards the control room's exit.

Jansen closed a white-hot hand over his forearm. "Quickly. He's heading for your cell," he said, tugging Megamind along before he could properly respond. They zipped down the corridor with dizzying speed, moving through walls and levels that they generally didn't pass through, until they broke past the side wall of his personal prison. His head was still reeling as Jansen flung him back into his body, and then retreated quickly to the far corner of the room. With a feeling of slamming and compression, Megamind gasped, tumbled off of the cot, and banged his knee pretty hard against the floor.

"Was that _really_ necessary?" he demanded as he tried to get his bearings back. Jansen shrugged.

He was still picking himself up off of the floor and silently beseeching the room to stop spinning when Mermanus turned up. Minion was just a few steps behind him. Sucking in a deep breath, Megamind treated the superhero to his best glare.

"Come to gloat again, Speedo Man?" he asked, leaning himself against the nearest wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Minion's fins flutter again, but when he looked directly at him there was no sign of it.

"You haven't miraculously escaped since this morning. What a shock," Mermanus flatly replied. "Hands behind your head," he instructed, before reaching over and deactivating the door's energy field.

Megamind raised his eyebrows, but complied, watching with increasing disbelief as the door to his cell slid back and Mermanus entered the room, his trident extended in front of himself. He wondered just what had gone on with that little transmission. Someone thought he'd escaped? Had Jansen let something slip on his end? He glanced briefly over to his ally, but the techno whiz looked just as baffled as he felt. When his gaze flitted back over to Mermanus, it was just in time to see him scratch his wrist with the sharp tip of his trident.

"Ouch!" he protested, immediately retracting back and grabbing his scratched skin. A small bit of blood oozed up against his fingers.

"And you're not some kind of optical illusion. Another shock," Mermanus muttered, backing out of the cell again. Megamind contemplated trying to tackle him, just for the sake of it, but then the door slid shut again, and the moment passed.

"What is this, 'Random Cruelty to Prisoners Day'?" he demanded. "Or did you and that last little thread of your sanity finally agree to go your separate ways?"

As the power flickered back into action, Mermanus casually wiped off the tip of his weapon. "No," he replied. "Just your girlfriend telling tall tales."

He froze.

"What?" he asked, his voice surprisingly quiet. That had to be slang for something, right? He wasn't _actually_ talking about…

"You know, the reporter. Your girlfriend," Mermanus reiterated. "Slasher went after her. I suppose he was intimidating enough that she just told him whatever he wanted to hear." He snorted derisively.

In three short strides, Megamind found himself standing close enough to his cell door that he could feel the hum of electricity bouncing off of his skin. "What do you mean, _Slasher went after her?"_ he demanded.

Mermanus grinned at him. "Oh yes," he said. "I suppose you wouldn't know. We don't get a great deal of news up here, do we?"

He wasn't in the mood to banter or trade jabs. "What's happening to Roxanne?"

But the hero was already turning away, motioning for Minion to follow him as he headed back the way he'd come. For a second Megamind considered shouting after him, even though he knew it wouldn't do any good. Whirling away from the door, he marched towards Jansen instead, his heart pounding in his chest.

"What did he mean?" he demanded in a low hiss. "What's been going on?"

Jansen raised his hands in a placating fashion, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "I don't know. But I can try to find out," he offered.

It wasn't much of a comfort when he vanished, then, not even bothering to wait for a response. Leaving Megamind alone in his cell once more.

* * *

Biter looked up at the high walls of the warehouse which surrounded him. The building reminded him a great deal of _Lair No.17, Lairs No.21 – 30, _and _Lair No.33_, even if it was outside of the city and so not somewhere he'd ever actually been before. There were a few high slits up at the top to let in sunlight, and a lot of dust and concrete columns, and corners where small rodents made rustling sounds. Under ordinary circumstances he would have happily recorded the location and transmitted his footage to Daddy's computer, and probably gotten accolades and praise for finding such a good potential lair. As it stood he settled for running a basic scan and saving the information to his own local files. More important than the building were the little blips he was still getting on his proximity detector.

He'd managed to follow the unknown signals so far, but this particular building seemed to be the end of it. He had left, but the signals kept drawing him back… and yet, there wasn't anything inside. Processes whirring, Biter decided to run _Search: LocateInvisibleObjects_. He hovered low, searching the floor of the warehouse carefully for stray rocks and pebbles and little bits of things. Whenever he found one he extended a clawed hand and plucked it up. After he'd gathered about a dozen or so suitable projectiles, he moved to the furthest right corner of the empty structure, and started launching them through the air. They didn't hit anything. Undeterred, he collected them up again from where they'd landed, and moved to another corner to repeat the process. After about an hour he'd covered the whole warehouse, but hadn't found anything.

Letting out an annoyed buzz, he ran another laser scan. Inconclusive. Not for the first time, he tried narrowing down the signal he was picking up on, but that only got him to the center of the empty warehouse. Biter stretched his eyestalk upwards. The roof was there. Then he looked down. The floor was there.

The only conclusion, then, was that what he was looking for was either on top of the building, or underneath it. He had already examined the top of the building.

Extending one claw carefully forward, Biter knocked on the hard material below him. Analysis of the sound was inconclusive. He circled the area for a moment, knocked a few more times, and then tried to run his best scanner on the floor, but that didn't reveal any new data. With a contemplative whirr, he gained a little more altitude, and then aimed his laser-cutter for the surface. The beam struck ground, thrumming and glowing bright red as it began to burn a groove into the concrete. For a moment it didn't seem to be having any sort of effect. But then the laser inched forward, colliding with something just slightly uneven to the rest of the surface, and Biter's sensors flared up as an electronic system came to life.

_Input: UnknownSystemActivation. Initializing Routine 115.2.10, Subroutine 11: RemoteDeactivation._ The process kicked in without a second to spare, and Biter jolted a little as his systems let out a pulse, and whatever he'd unintentionally turned on was subjected to enough jangling interference to turn it back off again. Curious, he stretched his eyestalk forward. The likeliest explanation for the reaction was that there was a hidden entrance located in the floor. With a self-satisfied hum Biter resumed use of his laser cutter, sawing through the uneven square of floor until he'd burned out a sizable chunk. It fell into the hollow space below it with a resounding clatter. Another electrical system started up, but _RemoteDeactivation_ worked on that one, too.

The space below the floor was dark. Biter examined it for a moment, shining light down into the dust motes he'd created. There was a set of stairs that he'd missed by several feet, and a long opening which led further than his tiny light could reach. But the signals were a little stronger now. Switching to nighttime mode, Biter descended through the opening he'd made, and followed the steps down. The underground room was half the size of the above-ground warehouse. Apart from some dust and grit which he himself had caused, it looked like a clean, open space. But that wasn't what caught his immediate attention. Because the room was full to the brim with deactivated brain bots.

Immediately Biter let out an excited bleep. But the action garnered no response – his siblings were all lying upon various shelves, still and unmoving, their lights dimmed in deactivation. Perplexed, Biter hovered forward, and poked the nearest one curiously with his claw. Silence. No transmission, no energy signal, no anything. The other bots were quiet in a way they only were when Daddy was repairing them, or they'd been broken. After a few seconds of visual observation he noted that the bot's power cells had been removed. The nearby bots all seemed to be in a similar state of disassembly. That explained why they were responding to him, but it didn't explain where the proximity signals were coming from. Keeping his lights up, Biter continued down the room, examining the disconcertingly still forms of his peers until he came to the end of the room.

Several of Daddy's smaller exo-suits were lined up against the back wall. A check revealed that they'd had their power cells removed, too, but one of the suits still had its back-up battery intact, though the reserve was almost entirely depleted. It had been setting off an automatic warning, which must have been what his proximity detector had latched onto.

There was no sign of Mommy or the signal from _RoxanneTracker_. Clicking his jaw absently, Biter fluttered to and fro between the suits. It looked like someone had removed a sizable portion of the lair to this location, and then deactivated everyone. He processed that information carefully through his systems, and after a few minutes, revised _Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak_ to include a new stage. _Project: SpaceJailBreak, Phase 3.2: Reactivation._ _Step One – ReplacePowerCells._

With a resolute beep he got to work.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Love to everyone who's reviewed so far!


	4. Impediments

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay with this chapter, the busy time of year has caught up with me.

* * *

It had been four days since Jansen disappeared to find out what was going on with Roxanne. Four long, silent days, that had left Megamind with nothing but his thoughts for distraction, and the tight-lipped heroes guarding his prison for company. He was just about at the end of his leash.

"Place thy hands behind thy head," Lady Mythman instructed. She was standing in front of his cell, wearing an expression of general boredom. Megamind didn't bother with the usual quips or glowers or attempts at conversation as he complied with her request, moving forward a step, but obligingly lacing his fingers behind his skull. Sighing a little under her breath, the superheroine punched in the code to kill the electrical current in the door, and then walked in. The floor was covered in a thin sheen of water. The toilet behind him was likely responsible, given that, after three days of concerted effort, he'd finally managed to break the plumbing. It was somewhat unfortunate that Lady Mythman had been on-duty for his modest triumph – she was one of the physically stronger heroes of the Collective. Possibly the strongest, without Metroman.

"I know not what ye thought to accomplish," she told him, stepping over towards him and reaching for his wrists. She had a pair of formidable-looking handcuffs in her grasp. "Thou wilt only be removed to another cell-"

Megamind dropped low to avoid her hand, ducked away from her grasp, and bolted towards the door. He had the element of surprise on his side, as well as the fact that heroes, unlike ordinary prison guards, didn't seem to work in pairs. It was still a pretty desperate move, but when his feet managed to clear the doorway, for a second, he almost thought it had worked. That would mark the first time he'd ever foiled someone without the use of his dizzying intellect or remarkable constructions.

"Emergency code 24! Lockdown corridor six!" Lady Mythman barked. A shrill clanging sound started emanating from the ceiling, and before Megamind could get more than a foot down the corridor, he slammed into something hard and fierce and bright red. The force of it sent him staggering backwards, his hands immediately flying up to cover his nose. Red filled up his vision. It was like the red he'd seen on the security cameras, the light from the station's main power source. Only it had somehow managed to relocate itself right in front of him, cutting off his escape and exuding a substantial amount of heat. A muffled curse escaped his lips, and he whipped around – the other end of the corridor was similarly blocked. Lady Mythman was moving, but taken aback as she was, the water made her slip and slowed her pursuit. In a last, desperate attempt, Megamind noted the keypad by the cell door. He jabbed his fingers against a random assortment of buttons, frustration flooding over him. If he could only _think,_ he would have been able to figure the interface out at a glance. As it stood, he only had luck to rely upon.

Apparently he had some small amount. As Lady Mythman dashed towards him, the cell door slammed shut, and the electrical current surged back into existence. One of her fists impacted against the surface. She reflexively recoiled. Underneath Megamind's fingers, the keypad flashed the words _Incorrect Code – Default Mode Activated_ at him, blinking in bright orange.

He sucked in a deep breath, the red light casting harsh shadows against the purple of his jumpsuit and the blue of his skin.

Lady Mythman scowled.

"O fiend and fool," she said. "What dost thou hope to accomplish with such acts? There is no escape for thee. Thou hast succeeded only in courting the wrath of Lady Mythman – 'twill be some hours yet before the alarm is answered by mine kinsmen, but answered it shall be, and even were it not, there be but one guarded path to and from this keep." Folding her arms, she glowered at him through the glass. "Thy plans were foiled err they were even dreamt."

Megamind sucked in a deep breath and retreated to the far wall of the corridor. He glanced up towards the ceiling. There had to be some kind of sound system in place, didn't there, if the station reacted to voice codes? He should have asked Jansen about that before. Licking his lips, which had gone dry and chapped in the filtered air, he decided to try his luck again. "Deactivate Emergency Code 24, remove lockdown on corridor six!" he said. There was a moment of quiet. The cell door hummed, and there was no response, except for the almost audible way that Lady Mythman rolled her eyes.

"'Twill not work," she told him.

"Cancel Emergency Code 24!" he tried again, ignoring her.

"Thou dost not possess the voice of a hero."

Flitting a glance over at Lady Mythman, Megamind puffed out his chest a little, and dropped his voice into his best imitation of a righteous baritone. "Deactivate lockdown on corridor six!" he boomed.

The effect was underwhelming, since nothing at all changed. With a huff of frustration, he moved closer to the nearest bright red barrier, and placed a hand on it again. It was hot. Incredibly hot, but it didn't shock him, and it didn't _quite_ burn him, either. He pushed against it. There wasn't any give at all to the surface. It was kind of like shoving at one side of a smooth metal oven. Still, he kept at it, moving from one hand to two and pressing until the skin of his palms felt too raw and red for him to keep going. Then he fell back, giving in to his frustration long enough to kick at the obstruction instead. That only succeeded in hurting his toes. With a muttered curse he hopped back over to the wall of the corridor, leaning against it, feeling the sting in his hands and feet and the growing, oppressive heat in the air around him. Stress had turned his throat as dry as sandpaper. He felt like he was lost inside of a desert, instead of locked inside of a space station.

Slowly, the pain in his foot, at least, began to lessen. Megamind slumped against the wall. He slid down and down until he found himself on the floor of the corridor, and then he tucked himself up, pulling his knees to his chest and leaning the top of his forehead against them. It was no good. There was no Minion to turn up at the last minute. No easy escape for him to make, no way for him to go rushing to Roxanne's side again. It had already taken him _four days_ to get as far as he had. Who knew what could happen to her in another eight? He didn't want to give up. But he couldn't think of anything else to try.

"…Thou art but paying the penance for thy crimes," Lady Mythman said. Her voice surprised him, but he didn't bother to look up. "Metroman was my kinsman. Were thee to face _my_ justice, thou wouldst be dead, and not merely caged."

Megamind sucked in a breath of stifling air, and let it out heavily again. "He's not dead," he replied. It was a futile statement, but really, he couldn't think of anything else to say.

No. Wait. Actually, he _could_. As the heroine opened her mouth to refute his claim, he fixed her with a solid glare. "Besides, what does _Roxanne_ have to do with that?"

"Thou wilt cease… wait, who?" Lady Mythman asked, her brow furrowing slightly.

"Roxanne," he repeated. What, did these people persecute so many of the friends and loved ones of their supervillains that they couldn't even keep track of them all? "Roxanne Ritchi. You know, Metro City's star reporter. Stands about average height, blue eyes, short brown hair?" Momentarily extending his hands for a second, he made a shape like an hourglass, exaggerating the lower half a bit. "Never did anything bad to any of your _little friends?_" Habit made him spit the last part out with some venom.

Lady Mythman gave him an imperious look. "If 'tis thy accomplice to which ye refer-"

He snorted. "That's Minion. He's a fish. Those are very different from women. They come with more scales and fins and tend to be much smaller, but since we're on that topic, where does your scantily clad friend get off on _mind_-_controlling_ _him_? Hm? Under what twisted morality system is that _not_ completely reprehensible? He's a free fish! He didn't even really help me build the solar death ray, if anything his contributions might technically qualify as sabotage."

The heroine carried on, effectively ignoring his interjection. "-then thou art mistaken. She hath followed in thy footsteps, by all appearances, and may well have slain the hero Dinomight."

Megamind sighed and slumped against his knees. "I don't know who you're thinking of, but you people might want to consider a change in your strategies if you keep dropping like flies," he quipped. "I'm talking about _Roxanne Ritchi!_ Why has your psychotic friend with the Ginsu-Miracle-Blade-hands been terrorizing her?"

His temper rose up with his question, but he just felt remarkably tired. Maybe it was because he hadn't been able to get very much exercise. Or sunlight. Or… _anything_, really.

"I know of whom thou doth speak," Lady Mythman insisted, narrowing her eyes and reaching a hand towards the door again. She retracted it again after a moment, gritting her teeth and looking quite displeased, a few blue sparks trailing between her fingernails. "The woman who hath taken thy place in terrorizing the denizens of Metro City. She dons a cape of midnight black and summons clouds of darkness, in much thine own fashion, riding upon a mount of blue lightning and cackling her dark glee t'wards the heavens. Her heart hath clearly of disaster been wrought."

He blinked.

"…What?"

"Do not play innocent, villain. Her schemes are marked by thy own thumbprint, as surely as the mighty Apollo doth drag the sun behind his chariot for each day's dawn," Lady Mythman insisted.

Megamind blinked again.

"What."

"Thy _accomplice_," she repeated. "She hath made use of thine own legacy."

He gave her an utterly blank look.

"The villainess employs thy fell machines, thy wicked craft."

"…I'm not following you."

Lady Mythman rolled her eyes. "Your girlfriend's been using your stuff!" she snapped, dropping the Olde English for a pleasant change of pace.

His first thought was that it seemed reasonable that Roxanne would use his things, considering that they'd been living together for a while, and he and Minion were both gone, so, really, who _else_ was going to use them? But then the full implications of why a group of _superheroes_ would be interested in her using _his things_ hit him, and his brain stuttered to a disconcerting halt. Even with his temporarily limited mental capacities he could put the implications together. But, they just didn't fit. All things considered, he and Roxanne had a surprising amount in common. A penchant for superheroics/villainy was not one of them. She was a _reporter_. A very, very good reporter – the best anyone could ask for, in his admittedly biased opinion – and, granted, she did have that certain spark to her personality which leant her towards being the most nonplussed hostage in the history of kidnap victims, not to mention a tendency toward surprisingly effective independent investigations, but she was normal. In the best possible way.

"This has got to be some sort of misunderstanding," he concluded. There were any number of questions or clarifications he could have asked for, but somehow, he couldn't seem to pluck one up and spit it out. The red light was making it even more difficult to concentrate than usual.

Lady Mythman opted not to respond, but rather paced the length of his cell for a little while, looking more exasperated than anything else.

Megamind dropped his head back to his knees, closing his eyes briefly as his temples began to throb. The heat made the back of his neck itch, and the glow from the barriers seemed to sink behind his eyelids, grating against his nerves until they were raw. After a few minutes he pressed his palms against his closed eyes and tried to block it out a little better. There was something about it that was particularly unpleasant, something the made it much more pervasive and nauseating than just an ordinary red light would be. Eventually, when he looked up again, he noted that he wasn't the only one who was being bothered by it. Lady Mythman had gone from paced to sitting on his cot, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut.

He smirked, in spite of himself. "Hey," he offered. "I think we can both agree that this escape attempt of mine is not _exactly_ a complete and perfect success. If you give me the code for the door, I'll let you out. You can apprehend me and deactivate this stupid system."

For a few seconds, Lady Mythman actually looked tempted. Then her expression closed off, and she looked away from him again, her mouth twisting into a fierce scowl.

"I shall not hand thee such knowledge, wretch," she replied.

"What if I promise to be good and not put it to use in any future escape attempts?"

"Nay."

"Pretty please?"

"Still thy tongue, devil!"

"Oh, come on!"

"_Nay."_

"Have I mentioned how fetching you look in your… armored bikini?" he tried approaching the situation from a different direction.

Lady Mythman glowered at him so hard that he was surprised the door in front of her didn't dent.

Damn. Well, it had been worth a shot.

* * *

Roxanne walked as quickly as she could through the dark streets of Port City. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have been more curious about her surroundings. She'd done a couple of pieces on Metro City's biggest neighbor, and had seen footage of it quite a few times, but she'd never actually been there before. It had a reputation for being a dangerous place to live. But with the crisp evening air rolling in from the ocean, and the skyline glittering in the distance, it was almost nice. She had to remind herself that she wasn't there to take in the architecture, though. Slasher's 'arrest' had been about as advantageous as it was disadvantageous, she decided. On the one hand, she'd managed to get a scan of him, which could be a huge advantage. On the other hand, he was way too unpredictable for her to assume that he'd just take her up to the prison. Like he was supposed to. He'd already subverted that expectation once, she wouldn't count on him not doing the same again.

What she needed to do was find a hero who was a little more typical. An old-fashioned, live-by-the-code hero. Someone whose actions were a little easier to anticipate. There seemed to be an odd shortage of those, lately. She hunched her shoulders a little bit, fending off the cold air. A few steps back she'd ducked into an alleyway and turned off the watch long enough to put on Megamind's cape again. Even though the image of Bernard was wearing a jacket, all she actually had to be going off of was her blouse, and she was really starting to feel it. It had helped for a while, but not by a lot. The fact that she was essentially lost and on her own, without so much as a quarter for a payphone, was something she was trying not to think about. Soon she'd have to think about it. Right then she was too busy walking and keeping her energy up to bother. Possibly she was holding out hope that one of the brain bots would miraculously turn up.

There was a crunch of gravel over pavement a ways behind her. Then another.

"Hey, mister. Nice night for a walk, ain't it?" A gruff voice said.

Roxanne ignored it, forgetting for a few seconds that she was disguised as a man, and continued on her way.

"Ain't that rude?" The owner of the voice clucked his tongue, following her down the street, his footsteps long and heavy. "I ask the mug a question and he don't answer! How do you like that?"

Something flashed out of the corner of her eye, right when she realized that _she_ was the person being talked to. Being followed. Her mouth went dry, and she stepped reflexively sideways.

"I don't like it at all." A figure stepped out of an alleyway, anticipating her movement and blocking Roxanne's path. His voice was no louder than a whisper, and he had a long scar across his throat.

When she had been doing her report on Slasher, she'd researched crime in Port City. There was a lot of mob activity. Petty crime was much higher than it was in Metro City, and she was pretty sure she'd stepped right into some of it.

"I'm sorry," Roxanne-as-Bernard said, her thoughts jumbling up a little bit as she tried to think her way out of the situation. "I'm partially deaf and, um, I didn't hear you properly. Did you ask me a question? I'm new in town, but I'll try to answer it…"

"Oh-ho-ho!" The first thug said, "He's new in town!"

"Welcome to Port City," The one with the whisper pulled a gun out of his pocket, and pointed it at Roxanne's stomach, "Give me your wallet."

Fear spiked up her spine and coiled in her gut, robbing her of the ability to speak for a few seconds.

"I don't have a wallet." She answered carefully, putting her hands up. A ray-gun was one thing, but something that shot bullets into you? A gun like that could kill you. Painfully. A gun like that was a genuinely terrifying thing, like falling into traffic, like seeing a familiar blue form crumpled against the spear-tip of a monument, still and unmoving. She didn't know how to deal with honest-to-god guns. Before that moment, she hadn't even seen one before. It looked small.

The two goons exchanged glances.

"You don't got a wallet?" the first one asked, scratching the back of his head.

"Somebody mug ya already?"

"Was it Buzzcut Boboli?"

Roxanne immediately latched onto the name and explanation. "Yes! Yes! I was already mugged! Damn that Buzzcut! He took everything! Even my bus pass! Which is why I'm walking alone at night in an unfamiliar city to begin with. I guess you guys are just right out of luck. Sorry."

There was a pause as the muggers exchanged some looks of disappointment and uncertainty. She really wished the second one would move the gun away from her. It was making her feel like she might throw up, and she wasn't sure how well that would go over.

"How'd you manage to keep your watch?" The first goon asked suspiciously, nodding at her wrist.

She scanned her brain desperately for some feasible explanation. "I told him… that it was… haunted?"

There was a pause. The criminals exchanged glances, again, but neither of them looked terribly skeptical.

"Just the kind of baloney a chump like Buzzcut would fall for," The talkative member of the pair scoffed and shook his head, "Well, we don't believe in no ghosts. And we don't like walking away empty handed. So turn it over."

Crap. "Alright…" Roxanne sighed, and moved her hand to the face of the watch. It was cool and almost reassuring beneath her fingers. Looking at it forced her gaze away from the gun trained on her, and just like that, it suddenly seemed possible to think clearly again. Shockingly clearly, in fact. Thinning Bernard's lips into a hard line, she turned the dial, pressed the button and let her holographic disguise change. The world flickered for a second. Her shape became abruptly bigger and bulkier.

"Slasher!" the whispering one wheezed, dropping the gun to the street. The metal clattered against the concrete. She moved reflexively out of its path, lifting her sword arm up.

"It's true! He can change shape!" the talkative one exclaimed. He lifted his hands up, his words degenerating into a litany of mumbled curses and prayers.

Roxanne tried to hide her confusion at his comment, and said: "That's right, scum-maggots. You… guys… have fallen for the oldest trick in the book! Now, get ready for some independent justice… scum." She winced at the awkwardness of the line. Neither of the muggers seemed to notice, however. The quiet one was slowly backing away, moving gingerly towards the alley, as if he was getting ready to run but was sure he would get a boot in the back as soon as he tried it. The other had started crossing himself.

"Oh man, we didn't know – please, c'mon, man, I can't get my ribs broke again, I just _can't _-" he babbled.

"Shut up!" Roxanne barked, trying to push her fear into anger. The sound carried pretty far across the street. The quiet mugger flinched, stopping short and reflexively bringing both of his hands up to his throat. His friend tapered off into what looked sort of like mild hyperventilation. Keeping one eye on the dropped gun, Roxanne raised her blade-shaped hand, and pointed it at him. "Give me your wallets," she demanded.

The mooks both did double-takes.

"Y…you're mugging us?" the quiet one asked, flinching away when he gaze drifted back over to him.

Unconsciously pursing her lips a little bit, Roxanne nodded. "That's right, scum. Uh, from here on out, every time you mug somebody, I'm going to... mug you back. Twice!" she barked. Both men jumped a little. The talker swore, and then immediately reached into his bulky pockets, his hands shaking so badly that he just dropped the three wallets he pulled out onto the ground. He stripped off his watch and rings as well. After a few seconds, his friend followed suit. He seemed to have a little bit of difficulty in coaxing his hands to come away from the scar on his neck, but he pulled it off long enough to drop his own belongings onto the sidewalk. Roxanne glared at the both of them, wondering why she felt sort of bad about it. They had just held her at gun-point and tried to rob her. She shouldn't feel like a heel for robbing them back, or for scaring them, no matter how petrified they seemed. The gun was still reflecting street light at her from its place on the ground.

She tilted her head dismissively. "Get out of here," she barked.

Neither of her would-be muggers needed more encouragement than that. They both took off down the street, their shoes slapping against a few light puddles, the talker's jacket billowing out behind him a little as he ran. His friend still kept one hand clamped around his neck until they'd raced out of her sight.

Roxanne stood there for a while. It was hard to say how long, really. One of her hands was shaking. Carefully, she curled it into a fist, and then sucked in a deep breath. With one last look around, she bent down and picked up the wallets and jewelry that had been flung at her feet. Clearly, the three the first goon had given her had been stolen. They had ID's and credit cards, and one of them was lined with pictures of a couple of smiling kids, which didn't do much for her mood as she examined them for cash. A second wallet had a small black pen and some paper scraps in the zipper pouch at the back. After some thought, Roxanne carefully wrote down all of the names inside the wallets, as well as how much money was in them. She'd pay the owners back, she decided, when she was finished with everything. She couldn't exactly go to the police station to drop off of their wallets, though.

At least the cape had a few pockets in the lining. Roxanne hesitated at the gun. She didn't know how to handle one, and she didn't want to risk it accidentally going off, but she also couldn't just leave it there on for anyone to stumble across. Could she?

The alley nearby had a dumpster in it. In the end, she gingerly picked the weapon up by the handle, carrying just long enough to drop it carefully inside, and left it at that. Not the best solution ever, but it would have to do. She hid alongside the dumpster to change shape again, stowing her recently-acquired belongings and forcing herself to take deep, even breaths. Her therapist was going to make a mint when all was said and done.

At least she had enough money to get her out of Port City, though.

* * *

Biter had been blown apart a grand total of seventeen times since he'd first been constructed. The last time had been while he was running _Emergency Battle Routine 198.2, GiantHead_, and _HalStewart, Hostile Designation: Titan_ had blasted him and several of his siblings to bits with his heat vision. But even before then, it had been a fairly regular occurrence, and the data from some of the older brain bots had assured him that getting melted, fried, beaten up, and torn into scrap was all perfectly normal. The other, non-decimated bots would all pick up the pieces, and Daddy or Daddy v.2 would put them back together sooner or later. They even had protocols and routines for repairing themselves when the damage was only minor. Daddy spent a lot of his time inaccessible in jail, and Daddy v.2 didn't have the same level of fine motor control and technical expertise, so Biter and the other bots were all highly well equipped for situations where they needed to fix something in a hurry. Power cells were one of their most adaptable qualities. In a pinch, lithium ion batteries and nine volt batteries could both be converted for temporary use. He estimated that he'd need about three hundred of them just to get the other brain bots up and running.

Leaving the warehouse behind him again, Biter modified _Disguise Sequence Theta_ to accommodate for his lack of hat. A quick internal analysis determined that he could no longer pass as sufficiently human, and would be best served to imitate laundry instead. Lowering himself to the ground, he made certain that his coat sufficiently covered him, and then began to shuffle along over the grass and pavement. He kept his eyestalk extended and his scanners ready so that he wouldn't be discovered in the midst of moving. Laundry didn't move under its own power.

Lithium ion batteries were most commonly used in power tools. Nine volt batteries were easier to find, and used in alarm clocks, smoke detectors, RC car controllers, and the effect boxes for electric guitars, among other things. Biter initiated _Routine 516.1 _and determined that the best places to start searching would be in _Commercial Building: HardwareStore _and _Residential Structure: Garage_. There were many more garages than hardware stores nearby.

He concluded that garages would be the place to start searching.

It took him some time to travel, as his systems were designed to favor hovering over crawling, and avoiding traffic was complicated somewhat by his disguise. Eventually, however, he worked his way back towards the scatter of small, square buildings that he'd first been amongst when he'd lost his hat. There were a few police cars here and there, which Biter carefully avoided. The first garage he identified (based on a careful examination of images from the internet) was rather like a tiny lair. It had only one window at the top, and a large door at the front which rolled back to reveal the interior. Or would, in theory. After quickly examining the area for potential witnesses, Biter attempted to push the door up with one of his claws, but it was deceptively heavy. Suppressing a beep of frustration, he scurried around the perimeter of the structure, scanning it carefully. Apart from the singular window there didn't appear to be any alternate entrances.

Biter considered the matter. He could use his laser cutter to create his own entrance. But, that would take a lot of power, and given the proximity of potential law enforcement, he deemed it insufficiently subtle for his needs. That left the window.

Doing another quick check of his surroundings, Biter carefully raised himself up, keeping the coat draped over the majority of himself, and examined the glass. There was no latch, but the opening would be big enough for him if he flattened his claws. The interior was devoid of apparent humans or surveillance systems. If he employed his laser cutter on a very low setting, the glass could theoretically be removed from its frame. Blunt force would like work as well, and take up even less energy. But it would also be louder. For a few seconds he weighed the need for stealth over the advantages of energy conservation. Opting for the former, Biter cut the window out of the garage wall, and only just managed to catch it before it plummeted down into the exterior bushes. Then he zipped inside.

The garage did not resemble the artistic representations and photographs he had on file. There was no car, and no work bench lined with power tools and half-finished bird houses. Instead there were boxes. Some of them were flattened and lined against a far wall in huge stacks of cardboard. Others had been stacked on top of each other, and appeared to be full of newspapers and broken lawn ornaments. After a quick search, Biter uncovered several cracked pink flamingos, but no batteries or power tools. There was a bag by the entryway which contained several empty beverage containers, propped up next to a pair of garbage cans, and a decrepit structure which may have been a sofa at some point, but nothing else.

Biter made an internal amendment to his files on garages, and re-examined his search protocols. The majority of items he was searching for were reputed to be located in them. Fire alarms were generally found in kitchens, however, and alarm clocks in bedrooms. If batteries were as scarce outside of Metro City as they appeared to be, then he was going to have to check those places, too.

Much subterfuge would be needed.

* * *

Megamind opened his eyes, blinking blearily up at the ceiling above him. He had the headache to end all headaches. A sharp, pervasive pain that seemed to beat violently against every corner of his skull, and left him with a deep sense of fear and disquiet. He was sort of used to pain. While he wasn't stronger than the average human (as far as he'd been able to observe, anyway) he was generally more durable than them, and tended to bounce back from his injuries pretty quickly. _Prolonged _pain was weird. Excessive pain in his head was especially weird, and for a few seconds, he couldn't help but worry that it was the sign of something awful. Like maybe he had somehow managed to get permanent brain damage from all of that miserable red light. Or maybe Jansen had been wrong, and what he was going through would be permanent – maybe the dampening field around him was slowly eating his brain, sucking out his thoughts like a leech and leaving tattered holes behind.

That was fairly terrifying to contemplate. Raising his hands, Megamind pressed slow circles against his temples, which actually did seem to ease his discomfort a little bit. He sucked in a deep breath, then let it out again. Whatever had happened to the days when being imprisoned meant three square meals a day and all the planning time he needed to hatch his next scheme?

"So I hear you tried to make another escape attempt," Jansen's voice drifted over to him. Megamind froze, surprised – though he wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected to ever hear from the wayward superhero again. Maybe it was just that his internal pessimist had been leaning towards the idea.

"Did you find out what's happening to Roxanne?" he asked, turning slightly on his cot. When a troupe of less-recognizable heroes had shown up along with the next shift change, he'd been apprehended again and thrown (none too gently) into a new cell, though by the time that had happened he'd been barely able to move, his thoughts completely disjointed, his muscles inexplicably weighted and difficult to move. He'd slept for an indeterminate length of time, woken, and then slept again, feeling only marginally better for it. As his coherency returned, so did his worries. Tenfold.

Jansed sighed, straightening his glasses and shaking his head a little. "No," he admitted. "_Something's_ going on, but whatever it is, they're keeping it under wraps. I can't say I'm surprised." His tone was genuinely apologetic. Nevertheless, Megamind felt a surge of resentment towards him for his failure. "With Slasher running the show, excessive secrecy is the norm."

"I can't stay here," Megamind grit out, shifting so that he was sitting up. His head swam for a few moments, and his stomach lurched, but after a few moments it settled down again.

"You can't leave, either," Jansen pragmatically pointed out. "You saw that yourself. We have to stick to our plan."

"But Roxanne…" he trailed off, remembering back to the last time he'd been stuck in prison when she needed him, staring at her face on a television screen. All the times he had kidnapped her, held her random against Metroman's valor, and he'd never once seen her look like that. Like she really _needed_ someone to save her. The memory stuck in his mind, as though someone had tacked a poster of it up on the inside of his skull, and it made his skin crawl. He felt useless and ignorant and he couldn't stand any of it.

Jansen let out a heavy breath. "If it helps, remember that the Heroes Collective _does_ have rules," he said. "Slasher might scare your friend, and maybe toss her around a little, but he won't really hurt her. The worst any of them can do is bring her here. Whatever's going on, her life's not in danger, at least."

Megamind pursed his lips a little, scowling down at his own hands. That made sense. He knew, better than anyone, that heroes had to follow certain codes and ethics. Otherwise they stopped being heroes.

He also knew, again better than anyone, that just because someone had all the seeming of a hero, that didn't mean they were cut out for the job. Metroman had been the greatest hero he'd ever known, and he'd apparently hated his role enough that he'd faked his own death and left everyone high and dry to get away from it. Titan was supposed to be a hero, and instead he'd been an even bigger menace to society than Megamind himself. Who knew what skeletons a group like the Heroes Collective kept in its closet? He was sure they had rules. He just wasn't really sure that they were as good about following those rules as they'd like the public to think. Was there ever a hero who really was exactly what they seemed to be?

"I'm sorry," Jansen said. "I know it isn't much of a reassurance. I'm afraid I'm not very good at handling things like this. I've… never really been friends with anyone, not for a long time. My empathy's a little lacking."

Megamind glanced over at him. His brief thoughts of resentment fizzled out and died. "There really isn't any way for us to move up our schedule?" he asked. "You can't, you know, do anything on your end? Maybe get them to reschedule the station's maintenance?"

Jansen shrugged, not quite meeting his gaze. "I've already tried," he admitted. "The good news is that your, um, unchoreographed escape attempt did a number on the security system. That make should make things ever easier for us, when the time comes."

"Really?" he asked. He tried to use the thought to cheer himself up a little. "How?"

One corner of Jansen's mouth quirked up a little. "The simple version? Security blocks like the ones Lady Mythman erected cause the containment field to expand. When they go down, it contracts again, and as you'd expect with repeated expansion and contraction in most things, the process weakens the system a little bit each time it's used. It's supposed to be for emergencies only," he added. "But, of course, it's been deployed over the years with less care than it was designed for. On its own that wouldn't have been very much, but while you were making your attempt, I took the liberty of…" He paused, waving a hand absently as he searched for the right words. Megamind suppressed another rush of frustration. Having these things boiled down for him like he was the really slow kid in class was incredibly annoying. "I suppose, to employ another metaphor, you could say that I widened a few cracks here and there."

A thought occurred to him. It had been so long since a good one had bothered to crop up that he was genuinely surprised. Given the nature of the idea, though, he wasn't sure if he should be pleased with himself, or just generally apprehensive about the immediate future.

"So, let me make sure I've got this," he said. "My escape attempt just kicked another dent into your vile-and-costly little power system?"

"That would be accurate, yes," Jansen agreed. "Although I wouldn't call it 'little'. I did tell you how substantial it is…"

Shifting a little, Megamind pressed his fingers to his temples again, moving them in slow circles as he thought. "Right, right, very impressive, we'll have to swap notes when this is all done, so on and so forth. If I make _another_ escape attempt, even if it doesn't succeed… no, let me rephrase that. How many times would they need to activate those 'security blocks' before it killed the system?" he asked.

Jansen's arms dropped to his sides. He cocked his head a little, thoughtfully, and for a few seconds it looked like he was furiously counting inside of his mind. Which he probably was. One of his fingers twitched, tapping the side of his leg a little bit, and then he cleared his throat and seemed to snap back to himself. Megamind wondered at the potential ramifications of losing yourself in your thoughts when your current form was essentially _made of_ thoughts. He was kind of surprised that tech whiz hadn't just disappeared or flickered out of view a couple of times.

"If I push it along, and assuming the maximum levels of stress are exerted against the system each time… one hundred and ten. Give or take a few random variables," Jansen determined. "Our original plan is still quicker. I don't think you could survive making a hundred and ten escape attempts in seven days. Close proximity to the dampening field is highly unpleasant, as I'm sure you've noticed."

Yes. Yes, he had noticed. He was continuing to notice, in fact, given that the effects hadn't completely worn off. The idea of doing _that_ a hundred and ten more times didn't exactly fill him with eager anticipation. While his long tenure as a supervillain had certainly given him the ability to lose gracefully, it hadn't quite made a masochist out of him.

_I need you_, Roxanne had said, what felt like ages ago, with the wind blowing through her hair and a cold metal bar twisted around her arms and waist.

"Well this is going to suck," he said, moving his hands from his temples and clasping them together, briefly, trying to muster up the tattered reserves of his… he wasn't sure if he should call it 'determination', 'ambition,' 'bravery', or 'incredibly noteworthy unwillingness to just to sit around and do nothing'. Probably the last one. 'Bravery' was still a little bit too hero-ish for his general sensibilities, and 'determination' and 'ambition' both sounded too generic. Nodding to himself, he stood up, and took stock of his new cell. Jansen was watching him with a worried expression, lingering in the corner.

"You… actually want to try it?" the hero asked him. "That doesn't seem like a very wise idea. Escaping won't do you much good if you injure yourself, and frankly, I'm not sure what over-exposure to the dampening field could do to someone of your species."

Raising a hand, Megamind waved off his concern. "I guess we'll find out," he reasoned. He couldn't just break his toilet again. The repetitiveness was tacky, for one thing, and for another, it was kind of obvious. There were tiny air vents at the top of the room, though. _And_ he could always try injuring himself on the door. Although, he'd noticed an appalling lack of anti-suicide measures in this prison, so he wasn't quite sure where they stood on the 'injured prisoners' front. In his travels with Jansen he'd never seen any kind of infirmary. That was probably a bad sign. Also, considering the fact that his head was _still_ pounding, he wasn't really in a rush to cause himself _even more_ physical pain. It would probably be better to fake an injury, but then, with the constant surveillance cameras and the general ambivalence towards his well-being, the Collective members probably wouldn't fall for it.

Ah, well. The vents it was, then.

Walking over to the corner of the room, he planted his hands and feet against the sides of the walls, and started to climb.

* * *

Roxanne managed to buy herself a bus ticket to Midvale without a lot of fuss. By then, apart from a brief stint with the knockout gas, she hadn't properly slept in about two days. Midvale was far removed from Metro and Port City's coastline, so as soon as she claimed her chair, she folded her arms around her disguised torso and tried to rest. It was easier said than done. The bus was stuffy and the upholstery on the seats itched, and the passenger next to her was an older woman who smelled very strongly of perfume. It made Roxanne's eyes water and clogged up the back of her throat. She tried to ignore it, but after the woman had finished fussing with her purse and arranging her jacket behind her, she apparently decided that it was a good idea to make conversation.

"I hate these buses," she said, startling Roxanne a little bit.

"Hmm?" she replied, blinking. She wondered if the projected image of Bernard looked as exhausted as she felt. It probably didn't show the physical signs, like dark rings under the eyes or anything like that. The woman smiled at her. She had lipstick on her teeth. Absently, Roxanne ran her tongue over her own incisors.

"These buses. They're always so stuffy. I hate taking them, but I can't stand to fly. Not with the way airport security's been going these days," the woman elaborated. "Would you like a mint?" Without any further ado, she produced a few round packets from seemingly nowhere, and plopped one into Roxanne's hand.

"Oh," she said. "Thank you. That's… very kind." The candy was swirled with red and white. Irrationally, she was reminded of when she had been little, and her mother had always admonished her not to take candies from strangers. She tucked it into one of Bernard's hard-light pockets. The woman carried on talking without complaint.

"You're very welcome. I'm relieved to be sitting next to a nice young man like you," she admitted, beaming. "I make this trip every few months to visit my brother's family, and I can't tell you the number of times I've had to sit next to some spiky-haired roustabout with headphones on the whole trip. You can still hear the music, you know, and I've never heard anything I liked coming out of those things…" her complaints continued on in a similar fashion until the last of the passengers had piled in, and the bus was trundling down the road, the scent of the exhaust sneaking in through the loose frame of the window. Roxanne managed to turn most of it into white noise, until she heard the distinctive rise in tone that indicated a question was on the way.

"-But you probably don't want to listen to me blather on about tax returns for hours. So. What are you traveling for? If you don't mind my asking," her neighbor inquired.

Tired as she was, Roxanne drew up a blank on how to answer that question. She opened her mouth, and a half-truth came tumbling out.

"I'm going to see my boyfriend," she said.

There was a pause. The woman's eyebrows had migrated towards her hairline. Roxanne spent roughly twenty seconds trying to figure out why that would be surprising, but then she recalled, again, that she was disguised as a man. She could maybe see how an admission like that might take certain people aback. Part of her kind of hoped that it threw the other woman off, if only so she would stop talking to her now and just let her rest. Though she probably wouldn't be able to rest soundly at all.

"I – oh, I'm sorry. Look at me gawking," the woman said, snapping her mouth shut and immediately switching 'surprised' for 'embarrassed'. "You must think I'm terrible. I was just surprised, that's all. Really. I've always felt very badly about that whole issue with the gays and marriage and all of that." Reaching out, the woman rather primly patted her on the shoulder. "Privately I've always thought that my cousin's son was a bit _like that_. His name's Jeffrey. He works at a salon down on sixth," she said, in a way that implied that she was hoping to ring some bells.

Roxanne's lips twitched upwards a little, in spite of herself. "I'm afraid I don't know him," she admitted, deciding not to mention the part where she wasn't even from Port City. _Or_ the bit where it was sort of ridiculous to think that she would know him anyway.

Her neighbor looked vaguely disappointed. "That's a shame. I always wonder about how he's getting on, Jeffrey. He's very tight-lipped. I suppose that's just his way," she mused. "But here I go again, off on another tangent. You were telling me about your gentleman friend."

"I was?" Roxanne asked.

"You were," the woman confirmed. "Is he a hairdresser?"

The idea actually made Roxanne giggle a bit, as a sudden mental image of Megamind's bald blue head appeared in her mind's eye. "No," she replied. "He's… well, he does a lot of things. I guess you could call him an engineer, really."

"_Oh_. I see." Her tone of voice implied something vaguely derisive, but Roxanne couldn't muster up the energy to care what she may or may not have mistakenly concluded. Because the truth was probably not an option.

Nope, not a lot of people would heard that sentence and then think 'I bet he's a former supervillain who turned over a new leaf after his archnemesis faked his own death!'. The idea was so ludicrous that it almost forced another giggle out of her, and she wondered if she wasn't just a tiny bit hysterical. Not in a big way. In that quiet way that sometimes happened when everything was terrible, and the panic had all bubbled out and transformed into something approaching giddiness. "He's really better than he seems," she found herself saying. "Even people who don't like him have to admit that he's brilliant, and he always does his best. Even when he's doing something that seems tiny or insignificant or just plain weird, he gives it his all."

The woman's features softened a little bit at that. "How did the two of you meet?" she asked.

Dark smoke. A booming voice. A mechanical arm grabbed her in the darkness, and she heard cackling, and in the midst of all her fear her surprise she noted, strangely, that Megamind's had very pretty eyes when he was up-close. It was harder to see them when he was cackling over a jumbo-tron.

"We had a mutual friend who introduced us."

"Oh, was it a blind date?" the woman wondered. "I always love hearing stories about blind dates. _Marty_ is absolutely my favorite film, but you probably don't know it, it's a quite old nowadays. And anyway I suppose it wasn't really the blind date that went well in that one, but it all turned out at the end."

Roxanne smiled a little bit. How would they have met, she wondered, if they were ordinary people with ordinary lives? Not that Megamind could have ever been ordinary. She thought briefly about his stint as Bernard, but the memory still brought up mixed feelings in her. What if his little ship hadn't landed in a prison, though? What if he'd never gone to school with Metroman, never seen the other's ship crash into his mansion home? What if he'd been able to have as good of a life as a blue-skinned alien super-genius could?

"No, it wasn't a blind date," Roxanne said. "We just both happened to be at a museum exhibit, looking for our friend at the same time. It was a little late. Neither of us actually find our friend, but we bumped into each other, and found out that we were both looking for the same person. Then we got to talking and… things just sort of went from there." Mentally, she super-imposed the image of Megamind over the memory of Bernard, imagining _his_ face lighting up as she told him that good would always rise against evil. His look of wonder as she hugged him and called him her partner. It was fairly easy to make the switch. One of the things she'd liked about 'Bernard' back then had always been his eyes. The beautiful, vibrant green eyes that she could never, ever admit to having admired before.

"Oh, that does sound sweet," the woman told her. "You think about how hard some people have to look to find love, you know, but it always seems to come best when it finds _you_ instead. You must miss him a great deal."

Was she that obvious? Roxanne swallowed. Then she sniffed. The corners of her eyes prickled, and maybe if she'd been herself she would have fended it off – she always _hated_ crying – but she wasn't, so she didn't. "I do," she said between sniffles. "I really do. You know, he does stupid things all of the time. He can't apologize and he hates admitting it when he's wrong and he always uses up all the hot water whenever he showers, and sometimes I think it's like he's _allergic_ to telling the truth even when it's _really obvious_ that he's lying, and he never corrects his mispronunciations even when you point them out because he's just _so stubborn_ but I, I really, really miss him." Making obligingly sympathetic noises, the woman handed her a small packet of Kleenex, and Roxanne thankfully scrubbed at her cheeks. "I mean I thought he'd be able to stay out of prison for sure now!"

There was a pause. Her neighbor's eyebrows had gone north again.

"Prison?" she asked.

_Whoops,_ Roxanne thought. Had she said that part out loud? "Um. Well…"

Thankfully, however, the woman raised a forestalling hand. "No, no, dear, never mind. I used to run with Sparky Oswald and his boys back when I was younger. I know how it is," she assured her, and then it was Roxanne's turn to feel extremely off-set as she reached over and patted her hand again. Then she leaned over in a conspiratorial fashion. "Just between me and you, sometimes I still visit old Sparky in the slammer. You've got to stand by your man." She winked.

What, did _everyone_ in Port City have mob connections? Her copy of Bernard's jaw worked silently for a few moments before she found the wherewithal to mutter something affirmative-sounding.

"Like the Tammy Wynette song," she heard herself say.

"Exactly! But I've never been fond of country music, mind. It's all twang, twang, twang, as if that sound is supposed to _pleasant_. So. Let me see if I can do the old puzzle-it-out trick. Your fellow's an 'engineer'… ooh, I bet he's a safe-peeler, isn't he?" the woman suggested, grinning a little at her. "That's respectable enough. It's his first time in the big house?"

"…No…" Roxanne hesitantly replied.

"Oh, but it's his first time since the two of you hooked up, isn't it? I can tell. The first time's always the hardest. I remember when they finally dragged old Sparky off, my goodness, I was hysterical. It was just lucky that police officer I hit with my shoe was such a nice fellow. Now, make sure you don't send him any books in his quarterly care package. They let you send books year 'round. Especially bibles. My word, I swear prisons have more bibles in them than churches do. Have you already sent him something? Because they let you give them little radios in these prisons nowadays, and socks and underwear are always useful. The boys run through them before you wouldn't believe. And stamped envelopes! That's only if you want him to write you, though. But don't send him toothpaste or shampoo, it never lasts until the next package and the prison stuff works fine enough anyway…" she carried on down a long list of advice, and Roxanne felt vaguely overwhelmed and a little off-kilter until the woman went rooting around her purse, and produced a small notepad and a candy-striped pen. "Here. I'll write it down for you, you'll never remember it all straight away."

The city trundled by outside of the bus, then, and for a moment it got a little quieter, as Roxanne heard a few other conversations from the bus's passengers and listened to the _scritch, scritch_ of pen on paper. Eventually even those sounds wore down, and her friendly neighbor offered her both the pen and the pad, and started to doze in her own seat. It would have been a good opportunity to steal some rest for herself. But the conversation had woken her up a little bit, and even though she closed her eyes and leaned back for a while, the dull roar of the bus's engine beneath her feet and her own thoughts kept her from sleeping. After a few minutes she looked down at the little notepad in her hands instead. The cover was glossy paper with a basket of kittens on it. It looked like at least half of the pages had been torn out for something or other, and several of the other's were covered in a neat and tidy scrawl that read things like _They'll give you a thirty pound limit_ and _If you want to give him an electric toothbrush, make certain it's from one of their approved manufacturers_.

Eventually the dull sound of snoring started up beside her. Roxanne slowly flicked the notepad open to a blank page, and uncapped the pen again.

_Step one,_ she wrote. _Locate Commander Courage_. Courage was Midvale's hero. She'd picked him because she was the only one she could think of out of the Collective's leadership circle who seemed to have the standard heroic trappings. After a fashion, at least. His repuation was a bit more militant than Metroman's had been. She didn't know much about Mermanus, and Lady Mythman was weird even by superhero standards.

_Step two, hide watch_. That was another reason to turn herself over to Commander Courage. He was old-fashioned, so she was pretty sure that he wouldn't think to check her bra strap for holographic watches. Then again…

_Contingency plan, watch is found. Play it by ear?_ She wasn't sure what she could do if they discovered all of her tricks and just carted her up to prison. Worst case scenario, she knew, would be that she didn't come back soon enough and Music Man set Dinomight free. She wouldn't be trapped up there, but her plan to rescue Megamind would probably also fail. She needed to work on something she could do if everything else failed to work. That was where most plans came apart. They presumed too much success.

_Step three, go to jail_. Groggily, with a brief shake of her head, she also penned in: _Do not pass Go, do not collect $100._ Then she crossed it out.

_Contingency plan, strip search_. She wasn't under any delusions about what going to a high-security superhero prison might entail. _Activate watch early. Try and use element of surprise_.

The pen slipped a little tiredly over the 'e' in surprise, so that it came out more like a sloppy 'o'. On the opposite page, the inked advice of her neighbor had soaked through a little, blue and dented. The problem, she decided, was that finding information on the prison itself was almost impossible. She didn't know what their security systems were like (because no one seemed to), she didn't know what their procedures were (again, because no one seemed to) and she didn't know what she could really _do_ once she got there. She'd just tried to collect as many advantages as possible. Infiltration, watch scans, brain bots… it all smacked of desperation.

She wondered if she could pull it off. But she didn't think she could do anything less than try, even when parts of it seemed to twist around or fail altogether. She was pretty sure that none of the brain bots would be coming, for example. And she'd lost her anti-kidnapped gun. And she'd almost gotten mugged, a thought which wasn't going away and leaving her alone, because when she leaned back and closed her eyes again she saw the flash of a silver barrel in the street light again. In her mind's eye the trigger went off, and there was a sudden _bang_ and then a pain in her chest, and they buried her as John Doe because no one ever bothered to take off the watch and discover who she really was…

A hand on her shoulder caused her to blink awake, inhaling sharply. Her neighbor smiled at her.

"We've stopped for a bit," she said. "Come on, dear, I'll buy you breakfast, and you can tell me more about your fellow before the next bus comes."

Feeling fuzzy-headed and a little lost, Roxanne rubbed the sleep from her eyes – almost knocking her holographic glasses off of her nose in the process – and agreed.

* * *

**Author's Note:** As always, love to everyone who reviewed, and anyone from the LJ comm! (Also, my apologies for any mistakes, I've only given this a quick read-through because I felt so bad about how long it took me...) A couple of folks guessed that Roxanne's plan is to get arrested for Dinomight's murder. You guys were all right, it's just taking her a little longer to get there. XD


	5. Copacetic

Biter stared at the wrench resting on the floor of the twenty-third garage he'd successfully infiltrated.

_Routine 1.2, Playtime_ was threatening to activate. There was no one around. The pincers on his claws clacked together anxiously – the wrench didn't serve any practical purpose, and it would slow him down. He needed to carry batteries. So far he'd only managed to accumulate two dozen. Besides, _Routine 1.2_ required the presence of at least one biped in order to be properly engaged, and there weren't any suitable ones available. He shouldn't have even bothered to stop. There wasn't any good reason to, and he had a great deal of motivation to simply cancel the routine and carry on.

Letting out a soft whirr, Biter darted forward, grabbed up the wrench, and wedged it between his jaws. He was beyond the range of the group network. None of the other bots would have to find out.

The remainder of the garage proved to be bereft of batteries, although it did contain a tiny, red and yellow vehicle constructed out of plastic, which Biter examined curiously for a few minutes. It looked too small to house a standard human, and didn't appear to contain an engine. He made a note of it for his files and later inquiries, and then snuck back out through the garage's largest window, pausing briefly to re-position the wrench so that it didn't impede his progress. The coat flapped around him. Carefully scanning his surroundings, Biter made certain there were no potential witnesses, and then stealthily hovered over to a window that led to the second floor of the house. Most bedrooms were on the second floor. He had determined that that was the best place to start looking.

Biter was in luck. The first window he tried gave him a view of a room with a large bed, a dresser, and two nightstands. A pair of small red numbers flashed from one of those nightstands. Success – an alarm clock.

Carefully, he cut the glass out of the window, caught it, and made his way inside. He propped the severed glass up against a nearby wall. Then he zipped across the room. The clock was small enough to be held in one of his claws, and it was a simple matter to peel back the casing and collect the batteries. Biter dropped them carefully into one of the coat's larger pockets, did one more sweep for any other promising signs, and ran an analysis of the household to determine whether or not it would be worthwhile to investigate the kitchen. He was still mid-assessment when his optical sensor noted something from the periphery of his vision.

One of the room's closet doors was open. On a top shelf, resting just over the brim of a cardboard box, was a hat. Biter suppressed a bleep of excitement. Lowering the wrench onto the soft surface of the bed, he hovered over, pulling the door open to create a wider entrance and sweeping the hat down off of the shelf. It seemed peculiarly hard within his claws. The substance it was made of was stiff and thatched together, weaving along the brim and forming a small bowl for the skull. There was a shiny purple ribbon tied around the center, which someone had affixed several artificial flowers onto. Biter placed it onto his head. It slipped against the smooth surface of his dome and tumbled onto the ground. With a soft blat of annoyance, he picked it up again, and tried to jam it on a little more firmly. Something made a sharp 'crack' sound, and the brim twisted awkwardly in his claw before the whole thing fell off once more.

Clearly, the hat was defective.

As he prepared to abandon it, his sensors picked up an odd sound. It was a human vocalization. Giggling. Biter looked towards the doorway, preparing _Routine 10.22, TacticalRetreat_, and reassessed the situation. A small human child was standing in the open doorway. It was clutching a blanket in one hand, and was quite obviously staring at him. The subject's gender was difficult to determine. But it wasn't screaming, which gave Biter pause, as he was clearly too insufficiently disguised to be unremarkable.

"Bobot," the child said.

_Basic Protocol 6.1, NothingToSeeHere_ kicked in, and Biter tipped his non-existent hat and started whistling innocently again. The child resumed giggling. That seemed like a good sign, but then a new vocalization drifted up from the lower levels of the residence. Determining that the success of his disguise was still too unreliable to bank on, Biter retreated towards the window again, detouring only briefly to reclaim the wrench from the top of the bed. The human child flapped a hand through the air.

"Bye bye, Bobot!" it said as he zipped back out of the window, just in time to avoid the heavy thud of footsteps carrying through the building's stairs.

Retrieving the batteries he needed was, Biter determined, becoming increasingly risky. If he was apprehended or damaged then his mission would fail. It had been fortunate that the human child had not commenced screaming, or else he might not have been able to make a clean getaway. Dropping low to the ground again, Biter assessed the issue. More brain bots would be able to get the work done faster, and with lowered odds of complete failure. If he had some of his siblings to help, then, even if he were to be decommissioned, they would be able to carry on. Provided that he could convince them of the importance of his task. Perhaps it would be better if he did not tell them that _Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak_ had been scripted by him.

Biter concluded that that seemed like an effective solution to his dilemma. Factoring the new information into his protocols, he straightened the coat slightly, and began to make his way back towards the warehouse. He would start converting some of the batteries he'd already collected, and proceed from there.

* * *

Midvale's local news station was centered in a tall, grey concrete building, that somehow managed to be minimalistic and cheerful at the same time. It stood on the corner of one tidy street. The WKKP logo was embossed on the front doors, and a few tame little green shrubs decorated the strip of ground between it and the sidewalk. Their security wasn't excessive, but it wasn't nonexistent, either. Roxanne (still disguised as Bernard) only got so far as the front lobby before the need for an ID tag became apparent. She'd known that it probably would be, no matter how relaxed the station was, but her first time going in she'd mainly been looking to get an idea of the place. There were only so many ways she could think of to get a superhero's attention. Most of them involved dramatics that she didn't have the resources for.

So she defaulted to something else she knew – namely, the news.

In the end the trickiest part had been trapping the forecaster whose identity she was wearing. She was pretty sure that the chair she'd jammed up underneath the maintenance closet's door wouldn't hold for very long, which put her on a time limit. Oddly, Roxanne didn't really feel nervous, for a surprising change of pace. She wasn't sure if that was because being in a studio setting, even an _unfamiliar_ studio setting, at least fell into the general vicinity of 'normal', or if she had reached some sort of nervousness capping point and just sort of spent it all up. Or maybe she was just too tired to bother. Either way, once they'd set her up in front of the green screen, Roxanne simply smiled at the cameras, pretended to clasp her hands behind her back, and turned off the watch.

Stunned silence descended over the stage and camera crew. The image of the petite blonde forecaster flickered out, replaced by the dark sweep of a cape, a rich flash of blue, and one leather-booted foot jutted pointedly to the side. Roxanne highly doubted that they filmed their weather girl live, so she graced the crew with her practiced evil grin.

"You might want to make certain that this is broadcasted," she said. "If you all don't want to die, anyway."

In a town without a superhero, that kind of assertion might have garnered skepticism, or questions, or a call for security. Fortunately, in a town _with_ a superhero, having the right clothes made every bit of difference. Megamind had never been bulletproof, after all, but no one in their right mind ever tried to shoot him.

One of the sound crew promptly started crying. There was a brief flurry of activity, and Roxanne trusted that, if nothing else, the station would want to get exclusive coverage of whatever the crazy supervillainess was planning. She waited placidly until she was certain that they'd gotten the picture, making certain the shoulder spikes on her cloak were straight and menacing, then folding her arms and adopting a look of general disdain. One of the more daring members of the crew leaned forward next to the cameraman, and whispered a tentative question at her.

"What're you called?" he asked. "For the ticker?"

Roxanne curved an eyebrow at him. He retreated almost immediately, and she heard him whisper 'no name' to someone else, past the scope of the bright studio lights.

It was almost a Zen moment in a way, standing there, knowing that she wasn't much of a threat – any one security guard could probably drag her off, and she wouldn't be able to do a thing to stop him – and also knowing that she was, however erroneously, in complete command of the room. No one would try it. Because she said the right things and wore the right clothes and stood the right way, no one would touch her, even though it was all an illusion. She wondered how many times Megamind had been in similar circumstances. The only weapons she had were a costume and charisma, and _they were working_. The camerawoman looked like she might faint.

"Now, now," Roxanne heard herself say. "Try and keep up. We don't want anyone losing their head here." She kept her tone gentle, but her expression hard, one corner of her mouth permanently curved upwards. The woman made a sound which might have been 'yes' but came out more like 'meep'.

_That'll do_, she decided, and her mind flipped back through the pages of memory to a time when Megamind had once stormed the station, demanding her ransom over their own cameras. It had been hilarious. Well, _she'd_ thought it was hilarious (as well as annoying), everyone else had just been scared stiff and wondering when the robots were going to harvest their organs for the black market. Sometimes, the strangest rumors had cropped up about him. But, though she never would have admitted it at the time, that was one of the first moments when she'd realized what a genuine _presence_ he had. He'd taken to the news desk, and spread his arms in a grandiose gesture of self-importance, cackling gleefully.

Roxanne mimicked the gesture, but opted to forgo the cackling. Something told her that in her case, right then, it would actually reduce her intimidation factor a little bit. She didn't need to ratchet up the 'crazy' – her outfit was doing just fine on its own.

"Citizens of Midvale," she said to the camera, clearing her throat a little bit, keeping her stance wide and bringing in one hand to rest atop her hip. "I have chosen your city as the site of my glorious surrender. You should feel _deeply_ honored." A low murmur of confused conversation started up at that. But no one made any move to stop her. Roxanne pressed on. "As no less than two champions from two different cities have already pursued me – to no avail, I might add – I will deal _only_ with your so-called 'Commander Courage'. Let's see if your beloved champion can do any better than those other buffoons, shall we?"

She got just the right amount of vitriol and disdain into the words 'Commander Courage', although she started to worry about how pleased with herself she was over that. She didn't really plan on making any of this behavior a _habit_. "Just to make sure that you get the idea, and your _brave hero_ doesn't opt to retreat or hide behind your local police forces, I have mapped out a complex series of bombs beneath several of your city's more… _charming_ landmarks." That was a complete lie. They'd probably be looking for bombs for weeks, now, though. "Unless the good commander arrives within the hour and sees me to justice, or if anyone _else _should attempt to thwart me, well… tick, tick, tick." While it might have helped the dramatics to draw attention to her watch on that final note, Roxanne didn't, because it also would have been fairly stupid. She wasn't sure how long it took Commander Courage to check the news or get from A to B (though as she understood, he could fly, at least) so she adopted a pose that seemed suitably dramatic, and settled in to wait.

Ten minutes later the back wall of the studio blew out, and she found herself encased in a glowing off-white sphere. A sharp-faced man peered at her from beneath the rim of a fancy army helmet. The station crew cheered.

Roxanne folded her cape around herself, and while her hands were hidden, slipped the watch off of her wrist. Hastily, she jammed it up into the bottom of her bra cup.

"Hi there, Commander," she greeted. With a snap of his wrist, the hero tugged the sphere – and her along with it – out through the hole he'd punched in the side of the building, drawing it up close and glowering at her fiercely. He looked genuinely mad.

"Where are the bombs?" he asked.

"Oh, I was lying about that," Roxanne assured him. "I just needed to get your attention. Seriously, I'm all out of bombs, and even if I wasn't it would probably take me more than a couple of hours to set them up. Which is how long I've been in the city for." Then she extended her arms and placed her wrists together, adopting the universal pose for 'cuff me'. "You should arrest me for the murder of Dinomight, though. That one was all me. Metro City's police station will have the footage if you want proof." Ah. _There_ were those nerves she'd been missing. Damn. She'd kind of been hoping that they'd take a permanent vacation.

Commander Courage looked her carefully up and down. One of his hands was glowing. The other wasn't, it was that hand which he pressed to his forehead, letting out an aggravated huff.

"This sort of thing never used to happen back when I just fought Nazis," he muttered to himself.

_

* * *

_

_BrainBot 88, Mark I Feminist Model, Designation: Surveillance Bot 11, _or Bow, bleeped online as Biter finished installing the converted batteries into her. Almost immediately she began transmitting queries regarding the absence of the city's network, and their location. Biter transferred the most basic relevant data to her, and moved on to _BrainBot 144, Mark II Sinister Model, Designation: Camera Bot 2_, proceeding down the lines of shelves in an orderly fashion. Bow beeped a confirmation back at him, and got to work helping, heading for their next sibling down the line. All tolled Biter had managed to convert enough batteries for six bots, but with help, the rate of reactivation would obviously increase. The camera bot, informal designation 'Hollywood', came shakily online, and instantly began voicing the same inquiries which Bow had. Soon enough he was joined the next bot, and the next, the streams of data flying between them all as they slowly came back online. Eventually, they started transmitting more and more specific inquiries. Biter let Hollywood take care of activating the sixth bot as he devoted himself entirely to answering them.

_Query - Location: Daddy?_

_Response – SpaceJail. Location: Unknown._

_Query – Location: Daddy v.2?_

_Response – SpaceJail? Location Unknown._

_Query – Location: Mommy?_

_Response: Unknown._

_Alert – Initialize Emergency Routines!_

_Cancel Alert – Insufficient Resources, Interfering Factors. Initiate Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak. Special Order – DaddyToldMeSo._

_Query – Re: DaddyToldMeSo. Date/Reference Memory File?_

_Response – Data corrupted by UnfortunateLightningStrike. Cannot comply._

_Query – UnfortunateLightningStrike?_

_Response – Forwarding recent meteorological data. RainStorm occurred several times during inquirer's extended period of deactivation._

_Data Received. Analyzing. Response – Skepticism._

_Transmitting House Bot Authority Code Alpha. Skepticism noted. BrainBot 133, Mark IV Sinister Model, Designation: House Bot No.3 assuming TemporaryLeadershipRole per absence of Daddy/Daddyv.2/Mommy. Challenge?_

_Assessing… Insufficient counter-data. Challenge declined._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Authority Code Accepted._

_Response - Biter wins. Ha._

_Response - Activate Sound File: Raspberry._

_Transmission – Re: Raspberry, forwarding Maturity files for future reference._

_Redirection – MatterAtHand._

_Query – Re: MatterAtHand. CityStatus?_

_Response – Transmitting relevant data. City, absent Daddy/Daddyv.2/Mommy. Present, MusicMan. Status: Dire._

_Query – BackUp?_

_Response – Negative. Lair Inactive. BrainBot 132, Mark IV Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.2,_ _BrainBot 131, Mark III Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.1 unresponsive._

_Transmitting Panic Code Delta._

_Cancel Panic Code._

_Override! Panic! Panic!_

_Initiating Anti-Hysteria Routine, Program 9.82: BitchSlap._

_BitchSlap received. Processing. Query – Engage emergency protocols?_

_Response – Negative. Emergency protocol data insufficient. Situation – PlayItByEar._

_Query – Re: MatterAtHand. ExoSuit Status?_

One of the newly activated bots zipped over to where the suits were slumped up against a far wall of the warehouse, and began scanning them. Biter obligingly transmitted what data he'd already been able to glean about them, largely preoccupied now with the matter of disguising his siblings. There was only one coat between the six of them, after all, and the search would be better handled if they split up besides. Assessing his possibilities, Biter determined that for the time being, it would be best if the others posed as garbage cans. They were easily acquired and commonly seen on the street. He sent out a brief explanation to the others, who were still investigating the warehouse, and then took off through the opening he'd made in the floor, intent on finding some.

The sound of human vocalizations caught his attention. They were nearby.

Too nearby.

Biter transmitted a quick warning to the other brain bots, and their activity stilled. Hollywood and Bow drifted up to peer through the opening the floor alongside him, processors whirring slightly. The vocalizations drew nearer, and became clearer as they did.

"Maybe he's not just being paranoid after all. Looks like someone broke the chain here," a masculine voice said.

"It's probably just kids," a feminine one countered. "You remember how many hoops we had to jump through to get this stuff here. Nobody could have tracked it all down. Hell, we weren't even allowed to keep records, how's somebody _else_ going to figure this out?"

"You're new. You'll learn. Supervillains, they don't kid around when it comes to their stuff," the masculine voice insisted.

There was the groan of a heavy metal hinge, then, as the door to the not-lair was pushed open. The other brain bots all started transmitting inquiries to Biter. What should they do? Retreat? Attack? Hide? Biter did a quick sweep of the storage room below them, then watched carefully as two human walked into the warehouse. They appeared to be alone. Examining their options, he transmitted instructions, and all six of the other brain bots zipped back over to the shelves and laid themselves prone in their spaces. Biter himself whipped behind the back of the staircase, and deactivated as many of his external lights as he could. The voice above grew louder and sharper as the opening in the floor was discovered. There was cursing, the thud of heavy footsteps, then a groan as an electrical system sprang to life.

_Query – Deactivate?_ one of the other bots transmitted.

_Response – Negative. Standby Routines: Ambush_, Biter returned. Up above them, a mechanical hinge activated, and a huge patch of floor just above the stairs swung back. Several lights blinked on.

"I don't suppose that part of the floor could have just fallen off by accident?" the female voice inquired.

"That'll be the day," the male one returned. Both humans descended the steps, carrying _PoliceWeapons_ in their hands. Were they police? They weren't wearing uniforms. Then again, it was possible that police looked different outside of the city. Biter transmitted a few tips to the other bots, examining them carefully. It seemed likely to him that if they left, they would inform the other police of the location of the not-lair. If that happened, there wouldn't be enough time to activate the other bots and relocate the exo-suits before they were raided.

The humans proceeded through the lower room, examining the shelves of brain bots and the line of suits, keeping their weapons at the ready.

"Come out where we can see you!" the female exclaimed.

"Not much point in hiding," the male added. "We're going to search this whole place top to bottom, and we're armed. Just come out nice and peaceful like and things won't have to get rough."

_Activate Ambush Routines!_ Biter transmitted. Abruptly, the other brain bots activated, and sped into the air. Hollywood turned on his brightest camera lights and flashed them directly into the humans' faces. One of them activated their weapon, and the bullet collided with Bow's jaw, cutting a small groove before it ricocheted into the wall and stuck there. Biter zipped forwards and, along with one of the other bots, grabbed the male human by the ankle. They flipped him so that he was hanging upside-down, while Bow forcefully yanked the weapon out of his grip. Beside them, the process was mirrored by two other bots and the female human, whose gun was also claimed by Bow. The pink-painted brain bot transmitted her displeasure at having been shot and immediately claimed the right to eat the guns. Biter let her have it.

"Oh crap, oh crap, we're gonna get killed by evil robots, oh crap, I always _knew_ I was gonna go this way…" the female human babbled.

"Quick, ask them what love is!" the male human suggested. "That one always works on television!"

"What is love, robots? _What is love?"_

Biter ignored their nonsensical vocalizations, instructed Hollywood to take his place in holding up one of the male's legs, and then zipped back out of the not-lair. A few minutes later he returned with the garbage cans he'd originally intended to collect. The humans were still babbling, and seemed to be attempting to swing themselves free of the brain bots' grip. It wasn't going very well for them. Biter made a few transmissions, and within a couple of minutes, he and the other brain bots had managed to get the humans right-side up again (it was detrimental to hold them upside-down for too long, and nobody wanted to violate their anti-kill protocols) and, rather than using the garbage cans for disguises, dented the metal around the humans' torsos and legs to keep them in place. It worked quite well. Biter congratulated himself on his innovative thinking, and made note of it in the shared files.

One of the other bots transmitted a general inquiry as to what they should do next.

Bow suggested that they make certain that the humans were out of the way until they could finish _Project: SpaceJailBreak, Phase 3.2: Reactivation._ _Step One – ReplacePowerCells_. Biter examined that possible course of action, but additional possibilities had occurred to him as well. Mommy's location was still unknown. SpaceJail's location was also still unknown. Police generally knew where the prisons were. Ergo, even though he would not have considered apprehending and detaining police humans before now, he determined that they might as well take advantage of the situation. Rejecting Bow's suggestion, Biter carefully and quickly put together a new protocol, and transmitted it to the others.

_Project: SpaceJailBreak, Phase 3.2: Reactivation, Step One.2 – Interrogation._

The other bots transmitted skepticism. Biter ignored them. They lacked _vision_. He had Bow and two others relocated the humans to the other side of the room, and instructed Hollywood to shine his camera light over their heads. Then he situated himself in front of them. He made certain that he hovered just slightly above the line of their heads, for purposes of intimidation, and clacked his claws menacingly. Both humans cringed. Carefully examining a few sound files, Biter attempted to mimic human vocalizations and form an inquiry as to the whereabouts of _SpaceJail._

"Bowp bowwrrr powp," he blatted.

"What's it doing?" the female asked.

The male shook his head. "Maybe they're keeping us here until their master arrives?" he suggested. "Damn supervillains. They always build robots, and the robots always go crazy."

"Bowwwwppp!" Biter tried, whirring slightly with aggravation. "Bowrr pow bowwwrrrrrbbbbbzzzat!"

"…Maybe it's broken?" the female suggested.

_Suggestion – FemalePolice has accurate observations,_ Bow transmitted.

_Response – ShutUp,_ Biter diplomatically responded. Though he was forced to conclude that his attempts at mimicry were falling flat. He would need to improve them at a later date. For the time being, they would have to pursue alternate methods of communication. Hollywood suggested that they project video clips containing the relevant vocalizations, but after some debate, they all agreed that locating and organizing the required video data would take an excessive amount of time. _BrainBot 201, Mark I Heinous Model, Designation: Lair Bot 14_, Chomp, suggested that they use Daddy's whiteboard. Biter and the others simultaneously reminded him that they didn't _have_ Daddy's whiteboard (Chomp's processors never seemed to fire as quickly as they should have) but the suggestion _did_ give Biter an idea.

Zipping back over to the empty line of shelves, Biter pulled out the bottom boards on the ones which were no longer holding brain bots. They were thin and metal. Easy enough to cut if he kept his laser to a low setting. Dropping one of them on the ground, Biter examined the space, and then carefully set to burning several neat, tidy lines into it. The other bots watched the police prisoners until he was finished.

When he was done, Biter gave a little bob of satisfaction, picked up the shelf, and headed back to where the two humans were. Then he used his claws to hang onto the corners, and held it out in front of them.

'_SpaceJail – Where?'_ was carved into the front.

The humans stared. Then they looked at one another.

"What the heck?" the female asked.

The male shook his head. "I have no idea."

Examining his files, Biter determined that they were 'playing dumb'. Dropping the shelf again, he etched a new inquiry beneath the first one, making certain to carefully ration the available space. They only had a few shelves.

'We will commence breaking fingers. Answer above query.'

Chomp transmitted an inquiry as to whether or not they were actually going to break the humans' fingers, because that violated several of their protocols. Bow thumped a claw over the dome of his skull and transmitted him a more thorough compilation of interrogation tactics, which was good, because it saved Biter the trouble of having to do it. The humans appeared to be having a heavily negative reaction to his updated request, however, as the female had started shouting for help, and the male had lost some of the pigmentation from blood flow in his face.

"I don't want to get my fingers broken! They don't pay us enough to be tortured to death by robots!" the female insisted.

"What the hell did you think you were signing on for?" the male demanded.

The female glowered at him. "There's a difference between being a security guard and being a superhero, okay? I thought these things were supposed to be deactivated!"

"You knew the risks. It's all in the pamphlet."

"Oh Jesus, I'm going to die listening to you talk about the damn _pamphlet_. This is karmic retribution for sleeping with my sister's fiancé, isn't it?"

"We're not going to… wait, what_?_ You slept with your sister's fiancé?"

"Don't look at me like that! I was drunk!"

Biter let out a blat of annoyance. Hollywood had determined that the humans' antics were entertaining enough to film, but it seemed that they were too distracted to be properly interrogated. A show of strength was probably required to ensure that their demands were taken seriously. No sooner had he concluded this than the other bots agreed, and without further preamble, Chomp and Bow grabbed the male by his ankles and turned him upside down again. Some of the color came back into his face. A lot of it, actually.

"Oh god," the female said. "Please don't kill us, tiny evil robots! We really don't know what you're talking about!"

Biter blatted again, and added a new query to the bottom of the shelf.

'Daddy/Daddyv.2/Mommy – Where?'

The female blinked. "It… they want their _mommy?_ What the hell?"

Hurriedly, Biter crossed that one out, and redid it.

'Megamind/Minion/RoxanneRitchi – Where?' he tried instead.

"Okay, okay! I think they're looking for the guy who made them!" the female exclaimed, looking over at the male, who was swaying slightly. Biter made a brief transmission, and the other bots put him down again.

"No, you don't say?" the male replied. "We can't tell them how to find him! He's in _spac…_ oh."

"Guess they already figured that part out," the female suggested.

"…Right. This isn't going to end well," the male replied. Then he turned so that he was staring directly at Biter. "Listen, evil robots. Your master is in outer space. In orbit. There's no, erm, _specific_ way to tell you where he is without a telescope."

Still being difficult. Biter lifted up the shelf, and tapped the top message pointedly with his claw.

"Yeah, yeah, 'Space Jail is where'," the female said. "We know. We can't _tell you_. Come on, don't they teach robots anything about outer space these days? In, um, robot school?"

"You sound like an idiot."

"Shut _up_, at least I'm trying to be friendly with them. The way you're going we'll wind be ground into robo-fuel before the sun's even up."

Biter considered this data. He and the other bots ran a few searches on their files. After a few seconds had passed, he grudgingly determined that it was possible the police really _didn't_ know the exact location of _SpaceJail_. Though they could also be lying. Concluding that it would be better to put that line of questioning to one side, he tapped the bottom part of the sign instead.

"They're not getting it," the female said, groaning and leaning back as much as her garbage can would allow.

"Look," the male said, lowering the volume of his voice. "We just need to keep them busy until check-in time tomorrow. Then someone will come looking for us."

Biter made a note of that. They would have to speed things along. He tapped the bottom part of the sign again, and the other bots determined that only two of them would be required to monitor the captured police. The other five zipped off to resume the task of gathering batteries, taking Biter's transmitted suggestions about garbage cans, and borrowing his coat, but leaving him with Hollywood and his camera lights.

"I think they understood that," the female noted.

"Dammit, how smart are these stupid things?"

Again, Biter tapped the bottom part of his sign. The bit which read 'RoxanneRitchi'. When the humans still didn't process his request, he grabbed a new shelf, and wrote it out more clearly against the surface.

'RoxanneRitchi – Where?'

The female blinked. "Roxanne Ritchi? Why the heck does that name sound familiar?"

Hollywood posited the theory that it was going to be a long night. Biter agreed.

* * *

On the great big scale of Disconcerting Things Roxanne Has Experienced, flying in a gigantic transparent bubble had to be pretty high up there. Roxanne figured she would give it a seven out of ten on the creepy scale, if only because she could see _everything_ around her, and the near-intangible substance of the sphere wasn't enough like glass that she could convince herself that she wasn't just going to fall through at any moment. The wind buffeted around it, creating a soft _whoosh_ as Commander Courage flew beside her, his glowing hand outstretched. Below them, the city's occupants paused in their daily activities to look and point. _That_ sight brought her way back. People had reacted in pretty much the same way whenever they saw Metroman. Or Megamind, really.

It also wasn't very comfortable. Roxanne had to sit, because the motion made standing virtually impossible, and she couldn't avoid the idea that everyone was pretty much staring at her butt. Sitting on the cape helped a little, but that didn't change the fact that it was still very wobbly, and confining, and… weird. She watched Courage out of the side of her eye, but he seemed pretty preoccupied with getting them to wherever they were going. She figured it was whatever 'step one' on the route to space jail happened to be.

She started to reevaluate that assessment when towed her through the balcony of a fairly large, but not terribly opulent building, and closed a set of glass double doors behind them. Roxanne stumbled as her hover-bubble of energy vanished.

The room they were in looked kind of like the lobby to a postmodernist hotel, if someone with a practical streak a mile wide had taken it over. A pair of sculpted, designer-looking chairs with high, white plastic backs were situated in front of a fake fireplace, with a glass coffee table stationed between them. Someone had dragged a plain, dark green couch into the room, and situated it just behind them. Most of the available surfaces were covered in newspapers and a few books. The walls were painted in curving, surrealist waves, but the couple of paintings which adorned them were all simple landscapes, or else black and white photographs of soldiers. An empty fish tank stood in one corner. The doors leading to and from the room were glass, but again, someone else's influence had intervened, taping over the surfaces with opaque white and brown screens.

"Wow. You really need to fire your interior designer," Roxanne quipped, before she could think the better of it.

Commander Courage shrugged, taking off his helmet and gesturing towards one of the chairs in the universal motion for 'take a seat'.

She stalled a little at the unexpected lack of hostility. Or confinement. Or efforts at arresting or otherwise imprisoning her. "Uh…"

"Please, Miss," the commander said. "I think the two of us really ought to talk. This room's not entirely secure, but it will have to do. I'm afraid I don't know much about the new technologies spies use nowadays, the little tiny recording devices and the cameras hidden in eyeglasses and what-have-you."

Roxanne blinked. A few seconds passed. She considered her options, but as the superhero across from her shifted his stance slightly, determined that there really wasn't anything for it but to sit down. The chairs were at least fairly comfortable, if odd-looking, and the fake fireplace cast an unseasonable glow around her. Commander Courage took the seat across from her. It didn't seem like he saw her as much of a threat, if his body language was anything to go by. Reserved, but not tense, nor particularly aggressive.

"I'm… not really looking to make a case for myself," she told him. "I just confessed and turned myself in. What's there to talk about?"

Courage gave her a long look. A minute ticked by. Roxanne shifted uncomfortably in her seat, wondering if she'd missed the part of his file that said that he could read minds or something like that. "Metroman mentioned you once or twice," he finally told her. "I don't know what's really going on here, but I can tell when things aren't lining up straight. And from where I sit, this whole thing is as crooked as a vagabond's teeth. The Collective might think that I'm just some slow soldier boy who's too out-dated to put anything together, that they can tell me one and three make eight and just pat me on the head, send me off to go and fight for them. Well, I might be out-dated, but that doesn't make me an idiot."

"You recognize me?" she asked him, a little surprised. She wasn't sure why she would be, though.

The commander nodded a little stiffly. "Of course. You did a story on me and the others a few years ago. It was a nice write-up – a little heavy on the flattery, I thought, but then most people like that sort of a thing."

Roxanne rolled her eyes. "Oh. Yeah. Sometimes I get a bit over the top," she admitted. "You should see some of my old stories on Metroman."

"I have," Commander Courage bluntly replied. "They weren't hard to find. I'm not much for these computer-machines, but I've figured out how to use the Google and go to the Youtubes. Although sometimes I regret it. Why are there so many pictures and shows about people's cats, do you think? It's not as though you can't see cats in real life. Just open the door and head outside, and I guarantee you'll run into at least one. If you'd have told me a few years ago that someday, the future generations of humanity were going to have access to some gigantic worldwide communications network that let folks in one country talk to folks in another country in just seconds, and that everyone would use it to make movies about _cats_… well I'd have figured that you belonged in a sanitarium. And yet, here we are."

"…I guess so…?" Roxanne agreed, wondering if she'd made a mistake. Maybe she should have tried for Lady Mythman. Though she was pretty sure that Lady Mythman wouldn't have fallen for the whole watch-in-bra hiding place.

"Well I guess it's beside the point," Courage concluded, shaking his head a little, apparently putting the thought aside for later consideration. "What I'm getting at, Miss, is that I know that something's going on. I just don't know _what_. Now, I'm aware that there is a time and a place for secrets. But there are only so many dark corners you can stick a man into before he starts asking for some light." One of his gloved hands started glowing again, a little faintly. He didn't appear to notice. "If my own side won't tell me what's going on, then maybe there's nothing for it but to ask the other."

Roxanne wondered if that would do her any good. She'd tried pretty hard to convince Slasher that Metroman wasn't dead, but maybe she'd just been unlucky enough to get the wrong guy. On the one hand, she'd told Metroman that she'd handle things without giving him away. On the other hand, she wasn't sure that she _could_. And Megamind didn't deserve to suffer indefinitely for the sake of Metroman's happiness. Not in her books, anyway. It would be so easy to just let the whole story pour out… but if she did, that would be it. She'd have to admit that she was trying to infiltrate the prison to rescue Megamind. Courage would probably figure out that Dinomight wasn't really dead, and her entire plan would hinge on the goodwill of a single member of the Heroes Collective. Who might not even have enough sway to change anything for her.

There was a voice in her that said that she should have faith in people's ability to do the right thing. In a hero's ability to actually be heroic. There was another, much more shrewd voice which pointed out that having faith in people only worked when they were people you knew. Even then, sometimes it fell short. There were Megaminds in the world, who could surprise everyone with how much good they really had, and the Hals, who could disappoint them just as badly.

"If you wanted to talk to me, you should have tried it a month ago," Roxanne said, extending her arms again. "Now it's too late."

Commander Courage regarded her solemnly, one hand tapping slightly against the corner of his helmet. "It's never too late to do the right thing."

"I'm glad you think so," she replied, without changing her posture or missing a beat.

They stared off. Courage had that whole military precision thing going on, but Roxanne felt like she could stare for decades, if she have to, until the world bent and did what she told it to.

"Just tell me this," he eventually asked her. "All of those times Metroman rescued you, helped you, pulled you out of the line of fire – are you really the kind of woman who could fall in love with a man who murdered someone you were _that_ indebted to?"

Roxanne swallowed a little, remembering how it had felt on that awful night in the rain, when she'd thought that that was _exactly_ what she'd done. Under false pretenses, granted, but if there was anything which ran a risk of eclipsing her anger towards Megamind at that moment, it was her disgust with herself. Which had only served as greater fuel for her explosion against Music Man, once the truth had finally finished crawling its way out of the labyrinth of lies that everyone had been leaning on. And yet… even before she knew for a fact that Megamind hadn't really done it, she'd already started to crack again, hadn't she? People didn't let people they despised, _murderers_ they despised, into their apartments. They didn't ask for apologies from other people unless they intended to try and forgive them. Deep down she had known that even if Megamind had killed Metroman, he hadn't really _meant_ to do it. That shouldn't have made such a difference. Dead was dead.

"I don't know," she found herself admitting. Almost as soon as the words were out, she regretted them.

Commander Courage gave her a curious look. "Now _that's_ an interesting answer," he said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Supervillains aren't generally renowned for their grasp on concepts like love and honor," she attempted to save, curling her lips sardonically. "Revenge is much easier. Now. Are you going to arrest me, or are we just wasting time here? Because as… incredibly weird as this room is, I'd rather not spend much more time hanging out."

The commander seemed to debate the matter internally for a few minutes. Then he sighed.

"I don't suppose that if I 'accidentally' left the door unlocked, you'd quietly escape and go back to living a normal life?" he tried.

Roxanne shook her head.

"Then you don't leave me much choice."

* * *

The first escape attempt proved to be the easiest one, more or less. The plan with the vents went… not _well_, but he managed to get out of his cell, anyway, and got another good look at the red lit security fields. He also nearly lost a hand when they went up, which bothered him more than he cared to admit. For his third attempt he made certain not to run too fast, because those barriers came up ruthlessly quick, and they didn't seem very fussed about whether or not anyone was standing next to them as they did.

For the fourth attempt there was one of the less iconic hero-types on duty, a guy who looked like he'd escaped from a renaissance fair, complete with ill-advised feather plumes on his outfit and a _tunic_. Megamind managed to get him angry enough to open the cell door himself, then smashed his dinner tray into his face and, as with Lady Mythman, locked him into the cell behind him by randomly punching numbers into the keypad. There was something remarkably satisfying about literally rubbing the hero's face in his organization's disgusting slop food, and then spending the next hour and half standing _just_ beyond his reach and repeatedly insulting his outfit. Because, really, there was dressing for good showmanship, and then there was being a walking joke.

After that was when things started to go south.

Ren-Fair Reject himself wasn't too bad - and at the very least didn't insist on speaking in limericks or anything similarly daunting - but after his shift relief showed up, Megamind was bodily manhandled back into captivity. Where he was bruised and shaken up and handled in a generally wrist-twisting, muscle-pulling fashion. The whole experience was capped off at the end with the mother of all headaches. It hovered behind his eyes and between his ears, a constant wall of pain.

And it wouldn't go away.

Megamind sucked in a breath through his nose, and then let it out again through his mouth. Slowly. Carefully. For the moment, it was the only thing he really had the focus for – just the deep breaths. His chest rose and fell in soft accompaniment to the splitting pain that ran straight through the center of his skull. It felt like someone had taken a lit match to his brain, and then shaken the ashes around, ground them up, and poured them back in through his nose. He'd never felt anything like it in his life before. It made him afraid – afraid that he was going to die, afraid that he was never going to be the same again, and afraid that he wasn't going to be able to get up and _move_, even though he had to. Needed to. He couldn't quite remember _why_, exactly, and that was frustrating him, but thinking too hard on it just made the pain worse.

As he sucked in another breath, there was a compressing sensation in his chest. He blinked, and suddenly the pain receded, until he was almost completely gone. He found himself standing in the middle of his new cell – the fifth one that they'd assigned him. Without the distraction of the pain, some of his clarity of thought returned.

Jansen straightened his glasses, and sighed.

"Thanks," Megamind awkwardly offered. Looking back at himself, he didn't look… good. The blue of his skin had been paling ever since he'd arrived, but it was only right then that he noticed how _much_ lighter it was, a few of the larger veins looking purple through the skin, which was covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

"Don't mention it," Jansen replied.

"I just need to rest for a minute or two-"

"No," the hero cut him off. "This plan isn't working. The dampening field is having too strong of an effect on you – you have to stop."

Megamind glared at him. "I don't remember asking for your advice on this, _Techmaster_," he snapped.

Jansen narrowed his eyes. "Martyrdom doesn't suit you, _Megamind_, and killing yourself isn't going to do anyone any good. Take it from someone who knows. There's a difference between the sacrifices that mean something, and the ones that… don't."

He groaned. "Oh, please, not with the 'oh the woes that I have seen' stuff right now, I really don't _care_ about your great costs and terrible tragedies. _This_ is nothing like _that_. I mean, obviously my situation isn't exactly a picnic in a sunny and garbage-free park, but I'll survive. It's not like some pithy security system designed by a somewhat-irregular-but-otherwise-perfectly-human guy like you is any real match for my brain."

"If you really believe that, then you're going to be in for an unpleasant surprise," Jansen insisted, with such utter certainty that Megamind found his will to argue fading in the stretch. Alright. Perhaps he was being just a tiny bit belligerent about the whole thing, and maybe he wasn't doing such a good job of covering up how badly it was affecting him, either, but, what choice did he have? Just _wait?_ Just sit around quietly and let the Collective do whatever it was that they were doing, and hope it came out alright in the end? Nothing ever just fixed _itself_. There was no magical fairy who repaired broken brain bots during the night, no mystic imps that made prison guards disappear, no benevolent spirits who delivered incredibly handsome geniuses from space, and the only people who could be counted on to help him were, in order: the reason he needed to escape in a hurry to begin with, brainwashed, and incorporeal.

Only quitters decided to get out of jail by sitting down and waiting.

His psychically projected shoulders slumped a little, and he stared at himself again. What a mess. Roxanne and Minion were both in trouble, and it was all because of _him_. He should have told Minion to stay behind when the trouble alarm went off that morning. He should have never let Roxanne forgive him – whatever was happening to her had to be because of something he'd said or done, something that had made the heroes think that she ought to be pursued. He should have expected something like this to happen. Should have paid more attention to the world as a whole, and not just his own tiny piece of it. His city. He should have considered the fact that it was all too good to be true, and prepared himself accordingly.

He should have built that gigantic city defense robot with the laser eyebeams and stationed it outside of City Hall, the mayor's 'discomfort' be damned.

"Come on," Jansen said, tapping him on the shoulder with a searing hot index finger. "Mermanus is on duty. We can go and watch your fish friend for a while."

Megamind sighed heavily. "What's the point?" he asked. "All he does is stare right through us." But he followed the psychic anyway, trailing after him as he flitted through the walls and doorways. He'd gotten better at the whole 'being a sort-of ghost' thing, though he still preferred floating to walking, and tended to sink through the floor if he started thinking about it too much.

The station's command center was as gloriously dull as it always was, proudly displaying its mostly-empty-screens (though a few of the cells on them showed signs of damage from his various escape attempts now) and its glowing red light of contempt. Mermanus was, indeed, stationed at the desk, flipping through an old copy of _National Geographic_ and picking between his teeth with his thumbnail. Riveting. Minion was slouched into a corner of the room, as usual, just sort of bobbing a little bit in his dome and staring sightlessly out at the world. Megamind hovered beside him for a while. Jansen examined the surveillance screens, and some of the equipment spread out before Speedo Man.

"Anything interesting?" he asked.

Jansen shrugged. "Not as such, no. There's some evidence of what we've been doing on the power readouts, but unless an emergency alarm goes off, I don't think they remember to check those. I made them a little… _complex_ for most people's sensibilities."

Megamind nodded, keeping one eye on Minion. "They really think it's impossible to escape from here." he reasoned. Complacent guards were always handy. They were slower to react, and more eager to believe that emergency alarms or sirens had just gone off by mistake.

"Well, they won't be so smug about everything when we're through with them," Jansen determined, folding his arms across his chest in a very hero-ish display of resolve.

"No, I guess they-" Megamind stopped mid-sentence as a sudden urgent, sharp pain spiked through him. His vision blacked out, and he felt a tearing sensation in his chest, as though someone had just stabbed it through with a chainsaw. Jansen swore. Something nearby beeped, and the room swam, blinking out in black spots as he attempted to pull air through his illusory lungs, but found that he couldn't. He gasped. But it didn't make any sense – his lungs were imaginary, his projected form only breathed because Megamind subconsciously carried the action over from his body, like blinking or, to some extent, even having a body at all. Panic rushed through him, followed immediately by a sense of burning, fiery pain which seemed to engulf him. Jansen's hands had closed painfully over his arms, and they were moving. He could see his glasses out of the corner of his eye, the line of his mouth hard and fixed.

Then he lost his focus, as everything about him seemed to catch and burn, all of his other senses drowned out by the twin screams of _hot_ and _pain_. He wasn't sure if he was back in his body or still a ghost, but he felt a brief moment of terror at the latter thought – because if he was still out of his head then what he was feeling was only a _fraction_ of what he could feel, and he couldn't even imagine anything worse. A ragged sound filled his ears. It took him several seconds to realize that it was the sound of his own breathing, his lungs filling desperately with air as he gasped and gasped, his head addled and pain-filled. For a disorienting stretch of time he seemed to completely forget where he was. He thought briefly that he was in prison – real prison, not horribly space prison – and felt a thrum of confusion at the dull, unpainted walls around him. Then he thought that he must be in a lair, that something had gone wrong. Then he seemed to think that he was lying on the street in Metrocity, with Titan's boot lodged against his back, crushing him as the hero burned through his skull with his heat vision. It would explain all of the grey he was seeing, and all of the painful heat he was feeling.

"Damn," a voice was saying, distant and fuzzy. He thought he knew it, though he couldn't place from where. "Damn, damn, damn. There's nothing I can do for you. I _knew_ this was a bad idea, and now look what's gone and happened."

_Wonderfully bad idea_, he thought, dazed, closing his eyes and clutching his hands to his skull, trying to block off whatever kept stabbing at it. _You don't know what's good for bad._ Only that wasn't Minion talking, was it?

There was more noise. A distant shout. The repetitive _thud, thud, thud_ of heavy footsteps. Megamind opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – to try and see what was going on, but the pain in his head reached a terrifying crescendo at that, and he slammed them shut again. The pounding sound didn't help, either. Something was beating repeatedly against a hard surface, making a sound like a drum, and causing an electrical current to sputter and pop and hiss.

"What are you doing?" someone new shouted. "Stop! _Stop!_ I **command** you to stop, creature!"

There was a thick sound of impact, like metal striking flesh, and then a groan and brief silence.

The pounding resumed. It went on for a few more seconds, and then there was a crashed sound, the impact of something metal shrieking and being torn. A dull hum, which he'd barely noticed in the background, died. Footsteps thudded across the floor nearby. Megamind smelled something like ozone and melted connectors, and something hard closed around his waist, hefting him up off of the surface of his cot. His chest collided a little awkwardly with painted metal. It felt just a little too hot beneath him – why was everything in so insistently, furiously overheated of late? His stomach lurched and his head swam, but he managed to muster enough of himself to try that whole opening-his-eyes thing again.

Minion bobbed a little bit in the direct line of his vision. The gorilla hair of his suit was gone – when had that happened? – and the body of it was covered in scorch marks and hairline fractures. One of the arms, the one not currently clamped around Megamind, was almost completely ruined. Mostly alarmingly, the collar of the suit was damp, with water leaking very slowly from the bottom of his containment dome. Minion himself wasn't looking towards him. In fact he didn't appear to be looking at much of _anything_, his expression locked in heavy concentration, uncannily still. Outside of the cell, someone groaned. Inside of the cell, someone else swore, and a voice began saying something about security and numbers. Megamind filled with a nameless dread, unconsciously bracing himself…

…and then the talking quieted.

"He lost consciousness," the voice inside of the cell said. "That was lucky."

Minion gave a soft shudder, his fins shaking, eyes blinking. Something changed about him, then. It was almost like watching a person wake up, and as he came back to himself he looked sharply around. Obviously confused.

"Sir? What hap…" he trailed off as he looked towards Megamind. His expression dropped immediately from confused to horrified. "Sir!"

Speaking was apparently a little bit beyond him right then. Reaching out, Megamind tried for a reassuring shoulder pat, but only managed to flop his hand a little bit. His head hurt _so much_. He just wanted it to be cool somewhere. Cool and dark and preferably filled with clean, fresh air, and no sounds at all. The room tilted as Minion moved, carrying him out into the corridor. Tension was radiating off of him in waves. "Where are we? What's been going on, sir? Please, you've got to tell me, I don't know what I should do!"

"Well, this complicates things," the other voice said. That was Jones… no, Jan… Janet? Wait, Jansen, that was it. That was Jansen's voice, although Megamind found it hard to recall who Jansen was, or just how he knew him. There was a beat, the pause filled with the underlying current of someone thinking very carefully about something. "I don't know when the next shuttle will arrive… we'll have to risk it. Tell your friend to carry you down to the security level, Megamind. We need to shut off the field."

Easier said than done. Or easier for someone else to say than for him to… say, really. Why did he have to be the one to tell Minion, anyway? What was wrong with Jansen's voice? He could hear it clear as a bell. Gathering the tattered threads of his concentration, Megamind opened his mouth to try and organize sounds into those tricky little things called 'words', but he was cut-off mid effort by a sudden, shrill blaring sound from the ceiling.

"That can't be a good sign," Minion said.

Jansen let out an aggravated hiss. "Someone must have set off an emergency alert. But that doesn't make sense. No one else should be on the station right now, not unless the shuttle just arrived."

Megamind wasn't sure how he knew that Jansen left, then, but he did, in a periphery sort of way. Minion was staring at the corridor around them, frowning as fiercely as he ever had.

"Mmrh," Megamind managed.

"It's okay, sir," Minion assured him. "We're going to get out of here. You just rest. I'll handle this." Then he started running, his gait more than a little jarring as he took off towards the right, water sloshing around him. That wasn't a good sign. Minion's water wasn't supposed to slosh.

_I should fix that_, Megamind thought. The hard walls around them whipped by as Minion dashed, then made a couple of back-tracks, then turned and actually passed by a corridor which seemed important, somehow. As he was trying to figure out a way to indicate that, however, his friend seemed to realize it, too, because he doubled back and started to head down it. The space was smaller than most of the station's entryways, and ended in a spherical door with a small glass slit at the top. As Minion started towards it, the door let out a soft whirr and whooshed open. A slight gust of air kicked past them.

Slasher was waiting just inside, his expression hard as knives.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Whew! Fair warning - I've been stupid busy lately, so the next couple of updates might be late. At least until all the Christmas madness wears down. I'll try and keep that from happening, though. Thanks as always to everyone who reviewed this story! And my other fics, too! ^_^ Love you guys.


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